They had reached a point about thirty feet from the threshold, when suddenly the door was flung violently open and a luckless boy bolted out, under the lamp, so that the three could distinguish the vehement gestures. The Doctor appeared in a passion of rage, calling after the retreating offender: "Don't you dare, young man, to come to me again with such a complaint. You get your work up to where it ought to be, or down you go, and there isn't a power in this country that can prevent it." The door slammed violently and silence returned. "He's not in a very receptive mood," said Wash, after a long pause. "Not precisely," said Hickey, thoughtfully. "I'm catching cold," said Crazy. "Suppose we put it over?" continued Wash. "What do you say, Hickey?" "I shall not oppose the will of the majority." "And you, Crazy?" "I think so, too." They returned to the Dickinson, where they were surrounded and assailed with questions: How had the Doctor taken it?--What had he said? "We took no talk from him," said Crazy, with a determined shake of his head, and then Wash added brusquely, "Just keep your eyes on the 'sinkers.'" "You took long enough," put in the suspicious Macnooder. "We were firm," replied Hickey, bristling at the recollection--"very firm!" [Illustration: chapter title decoration--BEAUTY'S SISTER] BEAUTY'S SISTER His hair it is a faded white, His eye a watery blue; He has no buttons on his coat, No shoe-strings in his shoe. "Beauty" Sawtelle, or Chesterton V. Sawtelle, as it was pronounced when each Monday the master of the form read the bi-weekly absences from bath, sat adjusting his skate on the edge of the pond, with a look of ponderous responsibility on the freckled face, crowned by a sheaf of tow hair, like the wisp of a Japanese doll. Presently he drew from his pocket a dance-card, glanced over it for the twentieth time, and replaced it with a sigh. "Cracky!" he said, in despair. "Sixteen regulars and eight extras; sixteen and eight, twenty-four. Gee!" Beauty's heart was heavy, and his hope faint, for the sinister finger of the Prom had cast its shadow over the lighthearted democracy of boyhood. Into this free republic, where no thoughts of the outside society should penetrate, the demoralising swish of coming petticoats had suddenly intruded its ominous significance of a world without, where such tyrannies as money and birth stand ready to divide the unsuspecting hosts. Now Beauty's woes were manifold: he was only a second former, and the Prom was the property of the lords of the school, the majestic fourth formers, who lived in the Upper House, and governed themselves according to the catalogue and a benevolent tempering of the exact theory of independence.