Fairbairn
wants to report the schoolhouse himself."

"No," said Fairbairn, "you send up the list, Riddell."

And so Riddell's captaincy received its first undisputed acknowledgment
that term, and he sent up his formidable list to the doctor, and with
mingled curiosity, impatience, and despondency waited the result.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE NEW CAPTAIN TO THE RESCUE.

There was something more than toothache the matter with Gilks that
afternoon.

The fact was his spirits were a good deal worse than his teeth. Things
had been going wrong with him for some time, ever since the day he was
politely turned out of the schoolhouse boat. He had lost caste among
his fellows, and what little influence he ever had among the juniors had
also vanished.

Still, if that had been all, Gilks would scarcely have been moping up at
Willoughby among the virtuous few that afternoon, while the rest of the
school were running mad down in Shellport.

He had a greater trouble than this. Silk, in whose genial friendship he
had basked for so many months, had not treated him well. Indeed, it was
a well-known fact in Willoughby that between these two precious friends
there had been some sort of unpleasantness bordering on a row; and it
was also reported that Gilks had come off worst in the affair.

This was the secret of that unfortunate youth's toothache--he had been
jilted by his familiar friend. Who would not feel sad under the
circumstances?

And yet Gilks's frame of mind was, so to speak, a good deal more black
than blue. As he paced up and down the playground, rather like a wolf
in a cage waiting for dinner, he was far more exercised to devise some
way of making his faithless friend smart for his cruelty than to win
back his affection.

When two good fellows fall out it is bad enough, but when two bad
fellows fall out it may be even worse, for whereas in the former case
one of the two is probably in the right, in the latter both are pretty
certain to be in the wrong.

No one knew exactly what the quarrel had been about, or what, if any,
were its merits, or whether it was a breaking off of all friendship or
merely a passing breeze. Whatever it was, it was enough to give Gilks
the "toothache" on this particular afternoon and keep him at Willoughby.

The hour that elapsed after call-over dragged heavily for every one.
The three heads of houses, after their brief consultation, went their
several ways--at least Bloomfield