“Well, I guess you can’t do that,” said Finch. “But if I had not been so stupid it wouldn’t have happened. To tell you the truth, Deering, I often wish I had never come here.” “That’s idiotic!” said Tony; and then asked tactlessly, “What would you have done?” “I dunno,” Finch answered. “I guess it would have been better if I had never been born.” Poor Jake resented Mr. Roylston’s attitude toward his hero much more than he did the master’s treatment of himself. Once or twice, glancing up from his desk in the schoolroom, Mr. Roylston caught a glance of such concentrated hatred in Finch’s eyes, as actually made him tremble. He attributed it, of course, to the boy’s perverse and willful laziness, and once or twice he returned Finch’s stare in a way, that though the boy dropped his eyes beneath it, seemed to burn into his soul. Jacob failed miserably in Virgil at the mid-year examinations in February, and did not do well enough in his other work to counterbalance the bad impression of his abject failure in Latin. The nervous, overwrought state in which he had been living during the fall and winter told on his health. At the best he was frail, but now he suffered frequently from intense headaches that forced him much against his will, quite frequently to spend two or three days in the Infirmary. Tony saw all this more clearly than anyone else except Morris. “What he needs,” he said one evening to Jimmie and Kit, “is to get an interest in something, to be brought out of himself, to get into something that will bring him more in touch with the life of the school.” Kit, in his easy-going way, agreed; and went on strumming his guitar, on which he had been trying to pick out a new popular air. Jimmie gave the matter a little thought and asked, “What can he do?” “Well,” said Tony, after a moment or so, “I’ve been thinking that it would be a good thing to put him up for the Dealonian.” “The Dealonian!” exclaimed Kit, tossing the guitar aside. “Why, man, you’re plumb nutty. He’s got as much chance of getting into the Dealonian as I have of getting into Congress. A fine figure that little scarecrow would cut in a public meeting, wouldn’t he?” “Oh, I think he could do it,” protested Tony, a little sharply, for he was annoyed by Kit’s tone. “It would give him a lot of confidence if we took him in. It would make him feel that the best fellows in school were willing to give him a chance.” “I dare say it would make him feel that,” Lawrence remarked judiciously. “But I can’t say that I see that he has any particular claim to consideration. The Dealonian isn’t exactly an asylum for the maimed, the halt and the blind.” “No, of course, it isn’t, but it’s supposed to be run for the benefit of the school, isn’t it? And ‘the good of the school’ simply means the good of the fellows in school. Finch has as much right to the Dealonian, if there’s a chance of it being a help to him, as you or I have.” “But he hasn’t any chance, d’ye see?” said Kit.