CHAPTER VI
Facing the Bully
Surprise on Garry Grayson's part was quickly followed by anger. Whoever had thrown that cup of water had done it with deliberate and malicious intent.
While Nick, who had caught most of the water, was wiping it from his sleeve, Garry leaped around the corner. There, as he had more than half expected, he encountered the grinning face of Sandy Podder.
Sandy was trying to slip into a room the door of which stood ajar. But Garry was too quick for him and caught him by the shoulder.
As Sandy wriggled out of the clutch a look of feigned innocence came into his face.
"Oh, hello!" he remarked, with an air of specious friendliness. "When did you get here?"
"You know as well as I do," replied Garry angrily. "What did you mean by trying to throw that cup of dirty water over me?"
"I?" replied Sandy, while in his furtive eyes lurked a grin of enjoyment. "You must be crazy. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, don't you?"
With a swift motion Garry bent forward, seized Podder's wrist and gave it a sharp twist. With a cry of surprise and pain Sandy's fingers unclosed and something tinkled on the floor of the corridor.
Garry pounced upon it and picked it up. The object was a collapsible tin cup that can be folded in a small compass and put in the pocket for convenience' sake.
Garry held out the cup, contempt on his face.
"Didn't know anything about it?" he said. "With this cup hidden in your hand and still wet from the water you tried to throw on me!"
"I tell you I didn't try to throw water on you," reiterated Sandy, a little of his assurance gone.
A crowd of boys had gathered, sensing a quarrel, hoping probably, boylike, for a real fight.
Nick Danter nudged Garry's arm.
"Don't start anything, Garry," he urged in an undertone. "This isn't the place or time."
Garry appeared not to have heard him. He unfolded the collapsible cup until it had assumed its full shape and size. There were a few drops of water still clinging to it.
"Give me that cup," demanded Sandy, beginning to bluster. "You're altogether too fresh. Give me back my property."
Garry looked at the few drops of water in the bottom of the cup. These he tossed coolly into the flaming face of Sandy Podder, while some of the boys in the fast-increasing throng laughed gleefully.
"Say you—you four-flusher," cried Sandy, fairly stuttering with wrath. "You give me back my cup or I'll—I'll—"
"Yes," replied Garry, stepping forward to meet him, hands clenched. "Just what will you do?"
Bill Sherwood came up to Garry and whispered in his ear:
"Don't spoil your entrance, Garry. There's nothing Sandy Podder would like better than to see you get in Dutch with the faculty."
Garry nodded. Crushing the cup in his hand he flung it at the feet of its owner.
"There's your cup," he said curtly.
Leaving the red-faced Podder to pick up the cup sheepishly, to the amusement of the spectators, Garry and his friends hurried down the corridor toward what they had been told would be their classroom.
Luckily, the numbers were clearly marked on the doors. They found their number, seventeen, without difficulty and slipped inside.
They were none too soon, for as Garry cast a glance behind he saw one of the teachers approach the group around Sandy Podder, inquiry in his eye.
"Gee, I'm glad you're well out of that, Garry!" said Rooster, with a sigh of relief. "It would be a bad thing to get into a fight your first day in the high school."
"Podder may peach, anyhow," Garry pointed out, but Bill Sherwood scoffed at this.
"Not much! There are too many witnesses to testify that he started the row. He'll want to keep his own skirts clean."
"Besides, his own part in it wasn't over-heroic," chuckled Rooster. "He'd hardly want to brag about it."
"You sure got him mad when you chucked those drops of water at him," grinned Ted. "I wanted to crow."
"The low coward!" exclaimed Garry, his hands clenching again at the memory. "I suppose that's the kind of thing we've got to look out for now. But if Sandy Podder's looking for trouble, he'll get all he wants! I can tell him that."
"He got some this morning," replied the grinning Nick. "Cheer up, Garry. You handed that sneak one bitter dose of medicine, judging from the look on his face when he gulped it down."
Some more of their classmates were coming in then, and as the time for the opening exercises was almost at hand they had no time for further conversation.
Now that Garry had somewhat cooled down, he was glad that he had listened to Bill's warning and not let his anger run away with him. There would be other ways of dealing with the fellow and more appropriate places for that purpose.
The principal of the school, Mr. Allen, gave the students a little talk in the assembly room before they scattered to their respective classes. It was a genial, kindly talk, and the new boys, as Bill later expressed it, "cottoned to him at once." He emphasized the necessity for hard study and the rewards that might be expected to come from it. Then he touched on the sports of the school, with which he was in hearty sympathy, though he warned them that scholarship must come first and that none would be allowed on any of the school teams whose work was not satisfactory to their teachers.
In the absorbing round of new classes, new subjects, and new teachers, Garry soon forgot all about Sandy Podder.
Not much work was expected of any one on that first day. It was more a matter of becoming acquainted with classmates and instructors, learning the rules, and the giving out of the books for the various studies of the term.
It was the first period of the afternoon that brought a surprise to Garry Grayson. It was not a pleasant surprise, and served, together with the scrap with Sandy in the morning, to shadow considerably his first day in school.
As Garry entered the classroom devoted to the study of English literature with the rest of his classmates, the tall, thin figure at the desk impressed him as being in some way familiar, and as the teacher turned his face toward the entering pupils Garry received a distinct shock.
The face belonged to the stranger whose immaculate clothing Garry had soiled with the muddy football on that unfortunate day of practice!