Part 34

"Wherever the wind blew him, Cæsar initiated the orators."

VIII

In the hallway the Coffee-colored Angel jabbed him with his elbow, muttering:

"You laughed at me, you miserable Rinky Dink. I'll fix you for that."

He disappeared swiftly. Before Dink could frame a reply he was surrounded by an admiring chorus. The Tennessee Shad and Macnooder shook hands with ceremony.

"You'll do," said the Tennessee Shad.

"You certainly will!" said Doc Macnooder.

"You've made a hit with Lucius Cassius," said the Tennessee Shad.

Dink shook his head; he knew better.

"You must always recite--always," said Doc Macnooder, from his great knowledge of the nature of masters. "Whether you're prepared or not--recite."

"I will," said Dink.

"And say, Dink," said Macnooder, "keep that outfit we sold you. There'll be more hayseeds in the fall."

Dink had thought of that; he had thought of something else, too, which he craftily hid in his own memory.

"Next fall I'll show them a thing or two," he said gleefully. "I'll make souvenir crockery sets the rage."

The Coffee-colored Angel and the petty annoyances of the Green House forgot, he went with a hitch and a kick, loping along, while his delicately-balanced imagination, now soaring above the gloomy descents of the morning, swam joyfully in the realms of future triumphs.

In this abstracted mood he passed Foundation's gloomy portals and Laloo standing in his door gazing down the road, and took the leafy path that led to the Green.

All at once he heard a battle cry and, turning, beheld the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary spring from their concealment and bear down upon him with unmistakable intent. Now, whether in a former existence Dink had been parent to the fox, or whether the purely human instinct was quicker than the reason, before he knew what he had done he had bounded forward and burst for home in full flight, with his heart pumping at his ribs. Easily distancing his pursuers, he arrived at the Green House before it dawned upon him that he had been challenged and run away.

He stopped abruptly with clenched fists, breathing deep.

"Now let them come," he said, turning.

But the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary, having abandoned the hopeless chase, had gone another way.

Angry and ashamed, Dink went to his room, vowing terrific vengeance. He planted himself before the mirror and, doubling up either arm, felt the well-hardened muscles.

"There were two of them, and I didn't have time to think," he said. "I'll fight 'em--any of 'em."

Reassured by the scowling ferocity of his reflected countenance, he turned away. But, passing near the window, he saw the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary come militantly up the stone walk. A moment later their steps sounded on the stairs. He went hastily to the door and shot the key. An instant later the door was tried, and then the contemptuous face of the Coffee-colored Angel loomed through the transom.

"I knew you were yellow the moment I looked at you," he said scornfully. "Pah!"

Dink did not answer. He was all in a whirl. His action in locking the door, so contrary to his heroic resolutions, left him in confusion.

"I wonder if I really am afraid," he said, sitting down-all in a heap. The look in the Coffee-colored Angel's eye had brought him an unpleasant creeping sensation in the region of the back.

And yet the Coffee-colored Angel, bone for bone and inch for inch, was just what he was--only he had fled from him, inadvertently, instinctively, it is true, yet feeling the running menace at his back.

"I'm a coward!" he said, staring at the opposite wall. "I must be a coward! If I weren't I would have opened that door."