Pip : A Romance of Youth

by Ian Hay

"PIP"

CHAPTER I

THE PHILANTHROPISTS

It was to Pipette that the idea originally occurred, but it was upon Pip that parental retribution subsequently fell, Pipette being merely dismissed with a caution. This clemency was due chiefly to the intercession of Cook, who stated, in the rôle of principal witness, that the "poor lamb" (Pipette) "could never have thought of such a thing by herself." This in spite of the poor lamb's indignant protests to the contrary. In this matter, as in many others, Cook showed both personal bias and want of judgment; for Pipette was as sharp as a needle, while Pip, though a willing accomplice and a philosophical scapegoat, was lacking in constructive ability and organising power.

But we have somehow begun at the end of the story, so must make a fresh start.

The Consulting Room, which was strictly out of bounds (and consequently a favourite resort of the children when the big, silent man, who kissed them twice a day, was out), contained many absorbingly interesting and mysterious objects, whose uses Pip and Pipette were dying to know. For instance, there was the Oven Door. It was set in the wall near the fireplace, miles up,—quite five feet,—and was exactly like the oven in the kitchen, except that it was green instead of black. Also, it had a beautiful gold handle. It was not hot, though, for one day Pip climbed on a chair to feel; neither did it open, for he was unable to turn the handle.

They had asked Mr. Evans about it, and he had informed them that it was a place to put bad little boys and girls in. But that was on a day when Mr. Evans was cross, having just had words with Cook about the disgraceful delay between the fish and joint at last night's dinner. Pipette, therefore, outwardly incredulous but inwardly quaking, appealed to Cook, and asked confidentially if the strange thing were not an oven; whereupon Cook embraced her and presented her with an apple, and wondered what the little precious would get into her poor head next, adding as an afterthought that Mr. Evans ought to be ashamed of himself. Pipette was so pleased with the apple and the task of conveying Cook's message to Mr. Evans's pantry—this was the name of the place where he lived; there was a delightful thing there called the Filter, with a little tap that you could turn on if no one was looking—that she quite forgot to ask what the Oven Door really was; so the mystery remained unsolved for many a day.

There were other wonderful things lying about. Books in plenty (but then books are dull things if you don't happen to be able to read), and two or three curious little articles like wooden trumpets, called "stuffyscopes." It was impossible to play tunes on these, though, and they puzzled the children sorely, until one joyful day when Pipette was taken with a cold on her chest, and Father—the name of the big, silent man who kissed them twice a day—took her into the Consulting Room and used one of those very instruments "to listen to my tummy wiv," as she afterwards explained to the envious Pip, who had not been permitted to be present.

"Did it hurt much?" inquired Pip.

"Not bewwy much," replied Pipette, unwilling to throw away a good chance of posing as a martyr. "He putted one end against his ear and the other against my pinny, and said, 'Hold your breff,' and I holded it. Pip, I've thought of a lovely game! Let's see who can hold our breff longest."

This suggestion was adopted, and the new game kept them occupied for quite ten minutes. After that Pipette surrendered unconditionally. To hold your tongue is bad enough, but to hold your breath as well, in competition with a small, silent boy with a solemn face, serious eyes, and lungs apparently of gutta-percha, who seems to suffer no inconvenience from feats of endurance that would exhaust a Red Indian, is more than a mere daughter of Eve can compass.

They were in the Consulting Room at the time, Father having gone out, as he always did between eleven and one; and the various unexplained mysteries of that delightful apartment, which were becoming a serious strain upon Pipette's feminine curiosity, once more lay before them. For the hundredth time they made the tour of the room, gazing, fingering, and wondering.

They merely sighed as they passed the Oven Door. That mysterious portal was past all comprehension. They had made one last effort to obtain first-hand information on the subject only last night, with highly unsatisfactory results. They were always taken to the dining-room at half-past seven to say good-night to Father, who to his numerous other eccentricities added that of eating his dinner at an hour when properly constituted people were going to bed. (Pip's rather hazy scheme of theology, imbibed in scraps from Cook and others, included a private heaven of his own construction, in which at bedtime little boys, instead of being hustled upstairs by an under-housemaid, sat down to a heavy dinner of several courses.) On this occasion the pair had entered the dining-room bound by the most deadly oaths known to childhood to break down their shyness, and ask once and for all what lay behind the Oven Door. But alas! desire outran performance, and both—all three, in fact—made a sorry mess of things. The big man, almost as shy of them as they were of him, asked Pip, heavily but kindly, how he had spent the afternoon; not because he wished to know, but because the question afforded a conversational opening. Pip replied politely that he had been down the street posting a letter with "one of the girls." He used the expression in all good faith: his firm friend the milkman cried it down the area every afternoon in some such form as, "Anything fresh to-day, girls?" or, "Well, girls, what news?" The big man, however, frowned, and said, "Come, come, sir, no kitchen manners here, if you please," and turned to Pipette, who, with a boldness surprising to herself, was endeavouring to climb on to his knee.

Having reached that eminence, Pipette, assuming a certain coaxing expression which she had found absolutely infallible with Cook, and not without a certain effect on Mr. Evans himself, said rather tremulously—

"Please, Father, is that oven door in the Kersultin' Room reelly a oven, or is it just—just to put bad little boys and girls in, like what Mr. Evans says?"

Mr. Evans, who up to this point had been standing in the background, listening to the conversation with an indulgent smile, suddenly remembered that it was time to bring the fish up.

Her father glanced down upon Pipette curiously. He looked tired and worried, as West-End physicians with enormous practices not infrequently do.

"What do you mean by 'oven door'? And what's all this nonsense about Mr. Evans?"

Pipette began to quail. This big man was cross about something, just like Mr. Evans when he had "indergestion." Her lip began to tremble.

"I didn't fink it would make you angry," she said rather piteously. "It was just that big oven door in the Kersultin' Room. Me and Pip wanted to know so much, and there wasn't nobody to ask, exceptin' Mr.——"

Here Father, much to Pipette's surprise and embarrassment, suddenly hugged her to his breast, murmuring the while to himself. Then he kissed her twice,—as a rule she kissed him once,—shook hands solemnly with Pip, and despatched them to bed.

The children had no nurse. The last holder of that position had left soon after their mother's death, and Cook had begged so hard to be allowed to take care of the "little dears" herself, that Father, who was too deeply sunk in the apathy of grief to desire to haggle over questions of domestic management, listlessly agreed. Since then Pip and Pipette had been washed, dressed, fed, and bedded by a syndicate composed of Cook and her myrmidons, who brought them up according to their own notions of respectability. Emily, the kitchen-maid, for instance, made no objection to Pip stirring his tea with the handle of his knife; but what shocked her ideas of etiquette and deportment was the fact that he insisted on doing so with his left hand. Somehow Pip's left hand was always getting him into trouble. It was so officious; it was constantly usurping the duties and privileges of its fellow, such as cleaning his teeth, shaking hands, and blowing his nose,—literal acts of gaucherie that distressed Emily's genteel soul considerably.

After the children had gone Father sat staring at his untasted dinner. Occasionally his gaze travelled to the opposite end of the table, where some one used to sit,—some one who had been taken from him by an inscrutable Providence five years before. Had she lived, Pip would not have referred to the kitchen-maid as "one of the girls," nor would Pipette be calling the butler "Mr. Evans." All these years he had been trying to hide his desolation by burying himself in his work, with the result that he now found himself busy,—overworked, in fact,—rich, and famous, a man at the head of his profession. Cui bono? His children, whom he had promised his dying Dorothea to love and cherish, were learning to venerate the butler and to converse in the jargon of the scullery!

So the Oven Door had to remain an unsolved mystery, and Pip and Pipette were compelled to comfort themselves with the Talking-Hole. This was a most absorbing affair, and, thank goodness! it was no mystery.

The Talking-Hole was carefully plugged with a whistle; and whenever a visitor came to see Father,—they came in shoals between one o'clock and three,—Mr. Evans would uncork a similar hole in the wall of the hall, and after blowing up it vigorously, would murmur the name of the visitor; and his words, owing to the fact that the Talking-Hole in the hall was in some mysterious way connected with the Talking-Hole in the Consulting Room, were conveyed to Father's ear. The conversation as a rule was of a formal and fragmentary nature, limited on Mr. Evans's part to the announcement of the visitor's name and some such remark as "Special appointment," or "No appointment," and occasionally, "Urgent case,"—always concluding with "Very good, sir." After that Mr. Evans would conduct the visitor up the three carpeted stairs which led to the Consulting Room.

Pip and Pipette loved the Talking-Hole. It was almost their only toy, and it was the more precious to them because they could not use it except when Father was out and Mr. Evans taking his afternoon siesta. Their one child-friend, Tattie Fowler, who was occasionally brought to spend the afternoon with them when her nurse had made arrangements to spend it elsewhere, was always regaled with a full-dress performance whenever she came.

The method of procedure was invariably the same. The children knew every move by heart. The moment that Mr. Evans, having closed the front door on Father, had closed his bedroom door upon himself, Pip would stalk with much majesty into the Consulting Room, shutting the door carefully behind him.

After an interval of about one second, Tattie, endeavouring faithfully to imitate Mr. Evans's stately tread,—have you ever seen a kitten trying to walk like an elephant, reader?—would approach the Talking-Hole in the hall, uncork the tube, and despatch an excited hurricane on its way to the Consulting Room. The following dialogue would then ensue:—

A gruff voice down the tube. Well?

Tattie [reading from an imaginary card]. Mr. Henry Hatkins, sir! (This, by the way, happened to be the name of Tattie's nurse's "young man.")

The Voice. Any appointment?

Tattie. None, sir.

The Voice. What's the matter wiv him?

Tattie. Infruenza, he thinks, sir.

The Voice. Send him up.

Tattie. Very good, sir.

Then Tattie would cork up the tube and conduct Pipette, who had been sitting patiently in the Waiting Room, up the three stairs to the Consulting Room. Here she abruptly dropped the rôle of Mr. Evans, and announced firmly—

"Now, Pip, it's my turn to be Father!"

(Tattie had no father of her own, and imagined that the term merely implied a large, silent man who lived in a room full of fascinating playthings, opening Oven Doors and blowing down Talking-Holes.)

After that Pip would be the patient, Pipette Mr. Evans, and Tattie Father, and the performance was repeated in extenso. Pipette, as the youngest, succeeded to the proud position of "Father" last of all.

Each of them played the leading part in different fashion. Pip, enjoying every moment of his impersonation, always sat solemnly in the big swivel-chair at the table until the whistle blew, when he would lounge across to the Talking-Hole and conduct the conversation as deliberately as possible. Pipette, on the other hand, possessed none of this artistic restraint, and was always standing on a chair, with her small ear ecstatically pressed against the mouth of the tube, by the time that Pip, in the character of Mr. Evans, was ready to converse with her. Consequently his withering blast, when it arrived, impinged straight upon Pipette's eardrum, frequently knocking her off her chair and invariably dulling her hearing for the afternoon.

Considerable freedom, too, was permitted in the interpretation of the part of Mr. Evans, especially in describing the patients' symptoms. In this respect the children were compelled to draw chiefly upon their own somewhat slight experience; for Mr. Evans, though he invariably gave the patients' names, was not as a rule entrusted with their complaints as well. Consequently the maladies which were shrieked up the tube so gleefully were those indigenous to small children, cooks and the like. When introduced by Pipette, the patient was usually suffering from "palpurtations, that bad!" (an echo of Cook); Tattie, whose pretty and interesting mamma affected fashionable complaints, would diagnose the case in hand as "nerves all in a jangle again"; while Pip, who was lacking in imagination but possessed a retentive memory, invariably announced, with feeling, that the visitor was a victim of a "fearful pain in his (or her) tummy!"

Near the Talking-Hole, on a small table, stood "The Terriphone." This, they gathered, was a sort of long-distance talking-hole. You turned a little handle, and, taking a queer, cup-shaped arrangement off a hook, conversed affably through it with unseen people, situated somewhere at the back of beyond. The children had seen Mr. Evans use it for sending messages to Father via Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes was a great friend of Pipette's. In the first place, he wore a uniform, which always appeals to the feminine mind. Then he lived in a fascinating little glass house at the gates of a great building called "The Orspital," where Father apparently spent much of his time. In the courtyard inside the gates bareheaded young men passed to and fro, discoursing learnedly of mysterious things called "Ops." Mr. Pipes wore two medals on his uniform, but beyond these there was nothing very attractive in the glass house excepting the Terriphone, which stood on a little ledge beside the pigeon-hole. Mr. Pipes, being attached to Emily, the under-housemaid, was always glad to see the children when it was that engaging damsel's turn to take them for a walk. From him they learned one day that his Terriphone communicated with the one at home, quite three streets away.

"It must be a long hole," remarked Pip reflectively to his sister.

The conversation then turned upon the weather. Mr. Pipes announced to the sympathetic Emily that, as a result of having to sit all day in a blooming greenhouse, his feet were slowly turning to ice. The authorities of the Orspital, he added bitterly, declined to allow him a fire, alleging that an oil-stove was sufficient for his needs.

"What a shime!" said pretty Emily.

"Something crool!" exclaimed sympathetic Pipette. (She had picked up this expression from Susan, the kitchen-maid, who was regarded by her colleagues as being somewhat "common in her talk.")

"Pore devil!" remarked Pip dispassionately.

"Master Pip!" cried the scandalised Emily, blushing in a manner which Mr. Pipes thought most becoming.

Pip, who had just gathered this pearl of speech from the lips of one of the hatless young gentlemen who talked of "Ops," turned his steady and inscrutable gaze upon Emily, beneath which that damsel's fetching frown faded, as it always did, into an uneasy smirk.

"There is something about that child," she once confided to Cook, "that makes me feel as weak as water. Looks at you as though your 'air was coming down on your face smudged. Says nothink, but he's a masterful one. Be a terror some day!"

Meanwhile Pipette, in whose charitable little soul a new and splendid scheme of outdoor relief had just sprung into being, asked, in a tone of suppressed excitement—

"Mr. Pipes, please, does your Terriphone go straight to our house?"

"As straight as straight, me lady," replied Mr. Pipes, who affected an easy jocularity when conversing with Pipette.

"Ooh!" Pipette turned to her brother.

"Pip, amind me to tell you somethin' when we get home."

Pip turned a cold glance upon her.

"You'll tell me all about it on the way there, I expect."

"I won't!" cried Pipette indignantly.

"Oh, yes, you will. Women can't keep nothin' to theirselves."

This pronouncement, delivered in Mr. Evans's most impressive manner, roused Emily and Mr. Pipes to unseemly mirth, and nearly reduced Pipette to tears. Mr. Pipes remarked that Pip was a "caution," while Emily summed him up as a "cure." Shortly after that, Emily and Mr. Pipes having made a now familiar reference to "the same old spot at half-past four on Sunday," the visit terminated with the usual expressions of good-will, and the children were taken home to tea.

Pipette's offended dignity held out till next morning, when, as soon as the banging of the front door announced that Father had gone off in his brougham for his daily round, she proposed a visit to the Consulting Room.

"In the morning? What for?" said Pip.

Pipette was positively heaving with suppressed excitement.

"You go there and wait," she said, "and I'll run down to Cook a minute, and then we'll—no, I won't tell you yet! Go on!"

Fearful of letting her precious secret escape too soon, she gave Pip a push in the direction of the Consulting Room and danced off to the kitchen, leaving that impassive philosopher to ruminate upon the volatile temperament of the female sex. However, he departed as bidden, and amused himself by sitting in the swing-chair, and endeavouring without success, for the hundredth time, to play a tune on a stethoscope.

Presently Pipette returned, carrying two little basins of the soup which usually served to span the yawning gulf between their breakfast and dinner.

Pip took his soup, and began to drink it.

"Stop a minute, Pip!" screamed Pipette.

Pip put down his basin.

"Well, what is it now?" he remarked.

Pipette at last unfolded her plan.

"Pip," she began a little shyly,—like all inventors, she dreaded criticism,—"you 'member poor Mr. Pipes saying how cold he was?"

"Yes."

"Well, let's send him this nice hot soup, Pip,—by Terriphone!"

The last words came with a rush. Then Pipette, heaving such a sigh as Sinbad must have emitted when he had got rid of the Old Man of the Sea, awaited her brother's reply.

Pip smiled indulgently.

"Silly kid!" he remarked.

Pipette had expected this.

"Yes," she said; "but, Pip, wouldn't it be loverly to do it?"

Pip's practical mind began to evolve difficulties.

"How are you goin' to do it?"

Pipette projected upon him a glance in which artless surprise, deferential admiration, and simple faith were exquisitely mingled,—a glance which, in after years, her husband once ruefully described as "good for a ten-pound note at any hour of the day,"—and replied simply—

"I thought you would manage all that, Pip. You're so bewwy clever!"

"All right," said Pip. "Let's do it."

Thus it is that women make fools of the strongest men.

They carried their soup carefully over to the little table beside the telephone.

"I say," said Pip suddenly, "is he to have both basins?"

Pipette's bounteous nature would gladly have sacrificed both Pip's lunch and her own, but she thought it wiser to concede this point.

"No; one will do, I fink," she replied.

"All right. You can drink half mine," said Pip.

They gravely drank Pip's soup, turn about, and then applied themselves to the matter in hand.

First, they lifted the receiver of the telephone from its rest and surveyed it doubtfully. There was a cup-shaped receptacle at one end into which soup could easily be poured, but the "tube" which connected it to the instrument was of very meagre dimensions.

"Are you sure there's a pipe all the way?" inquired Pip doubtfully.

"Certain. It's just the same as the Talking-Hole, only thinner. And the Talking-Hole has got a pipe all the way, 'cause don't you remember you put a glass marble in one day when I told you not to, and it fell out in the hall?"

Pip's doubts were not quite satisfied even with this brilliant parallel.

"It'll take a long time to get through," he said. He was fingering the silk-coated wire. "This pipe's awful thin. A marble would never get down it."

"No, but the soup will twickle down all right," said Pipette, whose mind, busy with works of mercy, soared far above these utilitarian details. (In later years she was a confirmed bazaar organiser.)

"We'll ring and tell him first, shall we?" suggested Pip.

"Yes, let's!" murmured Pipette joyfully.

She turned the call-handle, and Pip held the receiver, just as he had seen Mr. Evans do. After a decent interval he remarked into the cup—

"Are you there, Mr. Pipes? This is us."

This highly illuminating statement met with no response.

"I suppose he can hear you," said Pipette anxiously.

"Oh, yes. I'm talkin' just as loud as Mr. Evans does."

"I suppose you'll be able to hear him, then?"

"I expect so. But it's a long way. Ring again."

This time, in turning the call-handle, Pipette accidentally placed her hand on the receiver-hook, with the result that she actually rang up the Exchange Office.

Presently a voice inquired brusquely of Pip what he wanted. His reply was a delighted yell, and an announcement to Mr. Pipes that he had something for him. Further revelations were frustrated by Pipette, who tore the receiver from his grasp, and, holding her hand over the opening to prevent eavesdropping on the part of the bénéficiaire, whispered excitedly in his ear—

"Don't tell him any more! We'll just pour it in now, and give him such a surprise!"

Consequently the young lady in the Exchange Office was soon compelled to relinquish her languid efforts to find out what No. 015273 really wanted, and incontinently switched him off, recking little of the way in which two small philanthropists at the other end of the wire were treating the property of the National Telephone Company.

Very carefully Pip poured the soup into the cup-shaped receiver of the telephone, which Pipette held as steadily as her excitement would permit.

From the first it became obvious that soup-delivery by telephone was going to be a slow business, for the cup transmitted the generous fluid most reluctantly.

"It's such a very thin pipe," they explained to each other hopefully.

At length Pip remarked—

"I should think some of it had got there by now."

"Not bewwy much, I don't fink," said Pipette; "this handle thing's still pretty full."

"But the basin's nearly empty," said Pip. "The stuff must have gone somewhere."

"Some of it has gone on the floor," said Pipette truthfully.

At this moment the clock struck one.

"Father will be in soon," said Pip. "We'd better wipe up."

They propped the telephone receiver on the little table between the directory and a bookstand, and cleared up the mess on the floor with a handkerchief—Pipette's. As they finished they heard the brougham drive up.

"It isn't nearly all gone," said Pip gloomily, peering into the receiver. "If we hang it up on its hook the stuff will all fall out. Let's leave it like it is. Father doesn't never use the Terriphone till after lunch, and it will be all gone by then. Come on, Pipette."

The two Samaritans turned their backs upon the telephone and stole out of the room, leaving that sorely tried instrument to digest its unaccustomed luncheon as best it might.

It was Mr. Evans who suffered most. He was sent into the Consulting Room just before dinner to telephone a message to a patient. The telephone stood in a dark corner, and the gas in the room was turned low. Mr. Evans was surprised to find that the receiver, instead of hanging on its hook, was lying on the little table, carefully propped between the directory and a bookstand.

On lifting it up he was surprised by an unwonted feeling of stickiness; but when he held the instrument to the light, the reason revealed itself to him immediately in the form of a dollop of congealed chicken-broth, nicely rounded to the shape of the cup, which shot from its resting-place, with a clammy thud, on to his clean shirtfront, and then proceeded to slide rapidly down inside his dress waistcoat, leaving a snail-like track, dotted with grains of rice, behind it.

Pip was sent supperless to bed, where Pipette, completely broken down by remorse and sisterly affection, voluntarily joined him not much later. The following week they were sent to school.

---

CHAPTER II

MR. POCKLINGTON'S

So Pip and Pipette went to school, and life in its entirety lay at their feet.

Hitherto the social circle in which they moved had been limited on the male side to Father, Mr. Evans, and Mr. Pipes, together with the milkman, the lamplighter, and a few more nodding acquaintances; and on the female to Tattie Fowler, Cook, and a long line of housemaids. The children could neither read nor write; the fact that they possessed immortal souls was practically unrevealed to them; and their religious exercises were limited to a single stereotyped prayer, imparted by Cook, and perfunctorily delivered night and morning by the children, at the bidding of the housemaid in charge, to a mysterious Power whose sole function, so far as they could gather, was to keep an eye upon them during their attendant's frequent nights-out, and to report delinquencies (by some occult means) on her return.

Of the ordinary usages of polite society they knew little or nothing. To Pip and Pipette etiquette and deportment were summed up in the following nursery laws, as amended by the Kitchen:—

I. Girls, owing to some mysterious infirmity which is never apparent, and for which they are not responsible, must be helped first to everything.

II. A boy must on no account punch a girl, even though she is older and bigger than himself. (For reason, see I.)

III. A girl must not scratch a boy. Not that the boy matters, but it is unladylike.

IV. Real men do not play with dolls. (However, you may pretend to be a doctor, and administer medicine, without loss of dignity.)

V. Real ladies do not climb the trees in the garden in the Square. (But you can get over this difficulty by pretending to be a boy or a monkey for half an hour.)

VI. Girls never have dirty hands—only boys. (For solution of this difficulty see note on V.)

VII. You must never tell tales. Girls must be specially careful about this, not because they are more prone to do so, but because boys think they are.

VIII. Real men never kiss girls, but they may sometimes permit girls to kiss them.

IX. You must eat up your bread-and-butter before you have any cake. (This rule holds good, they found out later, all through life.)

X. Do not blow upon your tea to cool it: this is very vulgar. Pour it into your saucer instead.

Clearly it was high time they went to school, and Father, who had had vague thoughts for some time about "procuring a tutor" for Pip, finally made up his mind, and despatched both children one morning in the brougham to Mr. Pocklington's.

The school was a comfortable-looking building, standing inside high walls in a secluded corner of Regent's Park. On the gate shone a large brass plate bearing the inscription—

WENTWORTH HOUSE SCHOOL
AND
KINDERGARTEN.

Mr. POCKLINGTON.
The Misses POCKLINGTON.

The children could not read this, but Mr. Evans, who accompanied them in the brougham on the first morning, kindly consented to do so, his efforts to pronounce the word "Kindergarten" (an enterprise upon which he embarked before realising that he might with perfect safety have left it out altogether) pleasantly beguiling the time until the gate was opened by a boy in buttons.

Pip and Pipette found themselves in a cheerful-looking hall, larger and brighter than that at home, and stood staring with solemn eyes at the unwonted objects around them. From a room on their right came a subdued hum, and upstairs they could hear juvenile voices singing in chorus. They were put to wait in a small room.

Presently the door opened, and an old gentleman with white whiskers and a black velveteen jacket trotted in. Mr. Evans bowed respectfully.

"The doctor's compliments, sir, and I was to inquire what time the young lady and gentleman was to be sent for?" he said.

"Our morning hours," replied Mr. Pocklington with a precise air, "are from nine-thirty till twelve-thirty. At twelve-thirty we take exercise in the playground. Should the weather be inclement we adjourn to the Gymnasium. Luncheon is served at one-thirty, and we resume our studies at two-thirty. We desist from our labours at four."

Mr. Evans having made a dignified exit, the children, for the first time in their lives, found themselves alone in the world, and suddenly realised that the world was very big and they were very small. Pipette was at once handed over to a lady called Miss Arabella, while Pip was escorted by Mr. Pocklington to the changing-room, where he was given a peg for his coat, a peg for his cap, a locker for his boots, and a wash-hand basin for his ablutions (everything carefully labelled and numbered), and was otherwise universally equipped for the battle of life. Then he was taken into Mr. Pocklington's private sitting-room, whence, after a brief but all too adequate inquiry into his attainments, he was unhesitatingly relegated to the lowest class in the school, where he found Pipette already installed at the bottom of the bottom bench. Here we will leave them for a time, dumbly gazing at the opening page of a new reading-book, whereon appears the presentment of what they have hitherto regarded as a donkey, but which three large printed letters at the foot of the page inform them must henceforth be called an A-S-S.

Mr. Pocklington had been intended by nature for an old maid. He was an elderly faddist of a rather tiresome type, with theories upon every possible subject, from cellular underclothing to the higher education of women. He was a widower, and was assisted in the management of the school by his three daughters—Miss Mary, Miss Arabella, and Miss Amelia.

The daily routine of Wentworth House School was marked by an Old-World precision and formality which adults might have found a trifle irksome; but it did the children no particular harm beyond making them slightly priggish in their manners, and no particular good beyond instilling into them a few habits of order and method.

The day began at twenty minutes past nine with "whistle-in." The "monitor" for the week—a patriarch of ten or eleven—appeared at the side door, which gave on to the playground, and blew a resonant blast on a silver whistle. Followed a scramble in the dressing-rooms, while boys and girls changed their boots for slippers. At three minutes to the half-hour the monitor, having hung the whistle on its proper peg and armed him-(or her-) self with a dinner-bell, clanged out a summons to "line up." Thereupon the pupils of Wentworth House School formed a double queue along the passage, the eldest boy with the eldest girl, and so on,—Mr. Pocklington believed in mingling the sexes thoroughly: it taught girls not to whisper and giggle, and gave boys ease of manner in the presence of females,—and at the stroke of nine-thirty, to the accompaniment of an ear-splitting fantasia on the bell, the animals marched arm-in-arm into the ark (as represented by the large schoolroom), where Noah (Mr. Pocklington), supported by Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Amazonian Miss Mary, shy and retiring Miss Arabella, and pretty and frivolous Miss Amelia) stood ready to take roll-call.

Roll-call at Wentworth House was an all-embracing function. Besides answering their names, pupils were required to state whether they required "lunch" at the interval, and to announce the name of any library books that they might be borrowing or returning. Parental petitions and ultimatums were also delivered at this time. As might have been expected in such an establishment, all communications had to be couched in elegant and suitable phraseology of Mr. Pocklington's own composition. Consequently roll-call was a somewhat protracted function. As a rule the performance consisted of a series of conversations of the following type:—

Mr. Pocklington. Reginald!

A high squeaky Voice. Present, sir. I wish to take a glass of milk during the interval, and I am returning "The Young Carthaginian," thanking you for the loan-of-the-same.

Or—

Mr. Pocklington. Beatrice!

A rather breathless little Voice. Present, sir. I wish to take a glass of milk and a bun [very emphatic this] durin' the interval, and I propose, with your permission, to borrow this copy of "Carrots Just a Little Boy"; and, please, I've got a note from mum—I mean I am the bearer of a letter from my mother asking for you to be so kind as to—to excuse my not havin' done all my home work, 'cos I forgot—

Mr. Pocklington. Beatrice!

The R. B. L. V. I mean 'cos I neglected [there was no such word as "forget" in Mr. Pocklington's curriculum] to take the book home. And, please, mum—my mother would have written to you by post last night, only she forg—neglected to do it till it was too late.

And Beatrice, having unburdened herself of a task which has been clouding her small horizon ever since breakfast, sits down with a sigh of intense relief.

On the first morning after their arrival, Mr. Pocklington, having called out the last name and registered the last glass of milk, drew the attention of the school to Pip and Pipette.

"You have to welcome two fresh companions this morning," he said. "I will enter their names on the register, and will then read them aloud to you, in order that you may know how to address your new friends."

Turning to Pip, Mr. Pocklington asked his name.

"Pip."

"No, no," said Mr. Pocklington testily. "Your first baptismal name, boy!"

Pip, to whom the existence of baptismal names was now revealed for the first time, merely turned extremely red and shook his head.

"We do not countenance childish nicknames here," said Mr. Pocklington grandly. "What is your Christian name, boy?"

Pip, to whom Christian and baptismal names were an equal mystery, continued to sit mute, glaring the while in a most disconcerting fashion at poor Miss Arabella, who happened to sit opposite to him.

Mr. Pocklington turned impatiently to Pipette.

"What is your brother's name?"

"Please, it's just Pip," replied Pipette plaintively, groping for Pip's hand under the desk. "He hasn't got any other name, I don't fink."

"Perhaps it is Philip," suggested pretty Miss Amelia. "I believe"—with a little blush—"that 'Pip' is occasionally used as an abbreviation for that name. Is your name Philip, little boy?" she asked, leaning forward to Pip, with a glance which he would have valued considerably more if he had been ten years older.

"I don't know," said Pip.

"I think it must be Philip," said Miss Amelia, turning to her father.

So Pip was inscribed on the roll as Philip, which, as it happened, was his real name. (By the way, his surname was Wilmot.)

"Now, your first baptismal name, little girl?" said Mr. Pocklington briskly, turning to Pipette.

"Please, it's Pipette," she replied apprehensively.

Her fears were not ungrounded. The school began to titter.

"Pipette? My dear, that is a quite impossible name. A pipette is a small glass instrument employed in practical chemistry. Surely you have some proper baptismal name! Perhaps you can suggest a solution again," he added, turning to Miss Amelia.

No, Miss Amelia could offer no suggestion. Her forte, it appeared, was gentlemen's names. As a matter of fact, Pipette's name, as ascertained by reference to Father by post that night, was Dorothea, and she had been laughingly christened "Pipette" by her mother, because her father, when summoned from the laboratory to view his newly born daughter, had arrived holding a pipette in his hand.

So Pip and Pipette, much to their surprise and indignation, found themselves addressed as Philip and Dorothea respectively, and as such joined in the pursuit of knowledge in company with a motley crew of Arthurs, Reginalds, Ermyntrudes, Winifreds, and the like. Surnames were not employed in the school. If two children possessed the same Christian name they were distinguished by the addition of any other sub-title they happened to possess. Three unfortunate youths, for instance, were addressed respectively as John Augustus, John William, and John Evelyn.

Things at Wentworth House School move in a stereotyped circle, and Pip and Pipette soon became familiar with the curriculum. There were three classes, they found. The First Class, the veterans, nearly old enough to go to a preparatory school, dwelt in a stuffy apartment called "The Study." Their learning was profound, for they were taught a mysterious language called Latin, and another, even more mysterious, called "Alzeber" (or something like that). The Second Class, conducted by Miss Mary—formidable, but a good sort—in a corner of the schoolroom, did not fly so high. They studied history and geography, and were addicted to a fearsome form of parlour-game called "Mentalarithmetic," which involved much shrieking of answers to highly impossible questions about equally dividing seventeen apples among five boys.

Pip and Pipette occupied a humble position in the Third Class, where they soon developed a fervent admiration for pretty Miss Amelia, who was always smiling, always daintily dressed, and charmingly inaccurate and casual.

On Thursday afternoons the whole school assembled in the Music Room. Here faded Miss Arabella thumped mechanically on the piano, while the pupils of Wentworth House School chanted an inexplicable and interminable ditty entitled "Doh-ray-me-fah." The words of this canticle were printed on a canvas sheet upon the wall, and the method of inculcation was somewhat peculiar. Mr. Pocklington, taking his stand beside the sheet, would lay the tip of his little white wand upon the word "Doh" printed at the bottom. Miss Arabella would strike a note upon the piano, and the school would reproduce the same with no uncertain sound, sustaining it by one prolonged howl until the white wand slid up to "Ray," an example which the vocalists would attempt to follow to the best of their ability, and with varying degrees of success. Having rallied and concentrated his forces on "Ray," Mr. Pocklington would advance to "Me," and then to "Fah," the effects achieved by the elder male choristers, whose voices were reaching the cracking stage, as the scale approached the topmost "Doh," being as surprising as they were various.

The hour always concluded with a sort of musical steeplechase. The white wand would skip incontinently from Doh to Fah, and from Me to Soh, the singers following after—faint yet pursuing. At the end of three minutes, the field having tailed out, so to speak, every note in the gamut was being sung, fortissimo, by at least one member of the choir, and the total effect was more suggestive of a home for lost dogs than an academy for the sons and daughters of gentlemen.

Our friends enjoyed this diversion hugely. Pipette, who could carol like a lark, hopped from note to note with an agility only equalled by that of the white wand itself. Pip, who had no music in his soul, adopted a different method of procedure. Selecting a note well within his compass, he would stick to it with characteristic thoroughness and a gradually blackening countenance, until a final flourish from the white wand intimated to all and sundry that this nuisance must now cease.

Pip and Pipette were also submitted to a rather farcical ordeal which Mr. Pocklington called his "common-sense test." Shortly after their arrival they were called into the Study, where Mr. Pocklington, after a little homily on the danger of judging by appearances and the fallaciousness of giving preference to quantity rather than quality, produced a threepenny-bit and a penny, and commanded his auditors to take their choice. Pipette unhesitatingly picked the threepenny-bit, and was commended for her acumen. Pip, when it came to his turn, selected the penny, and after being soundly rated for his stupidity was cast forth from the Study and bidden to learn sense. A week later he was again put to the test, and again chose the penny, repeating his performance with stolid regularity when given a further opportunity of redeeming his character the following week. After that the affair developed into a kind of round game, Mr. Pocklington producing the two coins from time to time and Pip invariably selecting the penny,—a proceeding which gave his preceptor unlimited opportunities for tiresome little lectures to the school in general, and Pip in particular, on the subjects mentioned above.

Finally, after the entertainment had been repeated week by week for some time, Pipette, whose loyal little soul chafed at the sycophantic giggles of the other boys and girls when Pip was being scarified by Mr. Pocklington, boldly broached the matter to her brother.

"Pip, why don't you take the fripenny-bit? If you did he'd stop bein' so howwid to you."

Pip regarded his sister's small eager face with cold scorn.

"If once I took the threepenny-bit," he replied, "he'd stop offerin' the money altogether. Why, I've made eightpence since I came here. Silly kid!"

This was the last occasion in their lives on which Pipette ever questioned the wisdom of her beloved brother's actions.

Both children made friends rapidly. Pip, indeed, soon after his arrival, received a proposal of marriage, which, ever ready to oblige a lady, he accepted forthwith. But he was reckoning without Pipette. That jealous little person, finding one day that Pip had suddenly deserted her, and was at that moment actually sharing his morning bun with his fiancée in the boot-room, incontinently burst in upon the lovers, and after a brief but decisive interview despatched her rival howling from the room, remaining herself to share the bun with the newly restored Pip, who, to be quite frank, had been finding the rôle of a Romeo, however passive, rather exacting.

Isabel Dinting, the disappointed lady, was inconsolable for a day or two, but she eventually recovered her spirits, and lived to heap coals of fire on Pip's head, as you shall hear.

One of the most curious and characteristic institutions at Wentworth House School was Mr. Pocklington's system of "Task-Tickets." Every boy and girl on entering the school received ten little tablets about the size of visiting-cards, inscribed with his or her name, and numbered from one to ten consecutively. If a pupil failed in a lesson or broke a rule, one of his Task-Tickets was impounded, and was not restored until the faulty lesson was perfected or a specified imposition performed. Periodically there would be an "inspection," and many a small head whose owner was discovered to be short of tickets would be hung in shame that day. Only such confirmed reprobates as Thomas Oates, the bad boy of the school (whom Mr. Pocklington in his more jocular moments addressed as "Titus," much to his hearers' mystification), could endure the stigma of being perpetually without a full complement. Thomas indeed once electrified the school by announcing to Miss Mary, when asked for a ticket in default of an unlearned lesson, that all his tickets were in pawn already, and that, until he had redeemed one of the same, he would be unable to oblige her. Mr. Pocklington and the majority of his staff were horror-struck at such iniquity; but Miss Mary, in whom was concentrated most of the common sense of the family, instituted a search in Master Thomas's desk, with the result that she triumphantly fished out no less than five tickets. All of which goes to prove that Thomas Oates, like a good many of us, preferred notoriety, even as a malefactor, to respectable oblivion.

The Task-Ticket system presented another feature of interest. Besides their regulation ten ordinary tickets, Mr. Pocklington's pupils were entitled to acquire "Special Task-Tickets." If you weeded the garden, or filled some ink-pots, or wrote a specially neat copy, you were presented with a Task-Ticket marked "Special" in red ink in one corner. Next time a breakdown in work or the infraction of a rule brought you within the sphere of operations of Mr. Pocklington's penal code, exemption from punishment could be purchased by payment of one or more of your Special Task-Tickets. This scheme was attractive in several ways. Good children—chiefly little girls, it must be admitted—accumulated these treasures assiduously for the mere joy of possession, the trifling fact that their owners were far too virtuous to be likely ever to have need of them being more than counterbalanced by the comfortable glow of satisfaction with which the existence of such a moral bank-balance suffused their rather self-righteous little bosoms. Wicked children, on the other hand, would laboriously collect tickets against a rainy day, and, having accumulated a sufficient store to pay for the consequences, would indulge in a prolonged orgy of sin until the last ticket was gone. Thomas Oates once found ten Special Task-Tickets in an old desk, and having straightway filled a like number of buttoned boots in the girls' dressing-room with soap-and-water, proffered the same in compensation. However, the possession of so much hoarded virtue in such a proclaimed reprobate roused the suspicions of the authorities. Inquiries were set on foot, the fraud was discovered, and Thomas was only saved from expulsion from Wentworth House School by the intercession of pretty Miss Amelia, who cherished a weakness for all renegades of the opposite sex.

Pip's tear-stained ex-fiancée, Isabel Dinting, anxious to drive away the depression resultant upon her unfortunate attachment, allowed herself to become badly bitten with the ticket-collecting mania. Her own ten ordinary tickets invariably presented a full muster, and all her soul was set upon the acquisition of Specials. These, by the way, were transferable, and consequently Isabel's friends were requested to bestir themselves, and by extra acts of virtue earn something to contribute to her store. Pip himself assisted her. One day he caught and expelled from the classroom a troublesome bumblebee, and, much to his surprise, was awarded a Special Task-Ticket by the grateful Miss Amelia. He promptly handed over the gift to Isabel, whose gratification knew no bounds. Touched by his adorer's thanks, Pip decided in his quiet way to help her further. Next morning the schoolroom suffered from a positive inundation of bumblebees, and the services rendered by Pip in removing them were rewarded by more Specials, all of which were duly handed over to the now greatly consoled Isabel. When, however, the phenomenon occurred again on the following morning, Miss Mary, who did not share her sister's romantic belief in the integrity of the male sex, became suspicious, and insisted on searching Pip's desk. An incautiously handled paper bag emitted a perfect cascade of moribund bumblebees, and Pip's ingenious device for obliging a lady stood revealed. After that he made no more contributions to the supply.

Mention has already been made of that arch-ruffian Master Thomas Oates. With him Pip waged war from the day that he entered the school. Hostilities commenced immediately. Thomas dared Pip to place his hand in a can of almost boiling water in the dressing-room. Pip did so, and kept it there unwinkingly for the space of a full minute. Next day his hand was skinless, and Father had to dress it for him in splendidly conspicuous bandages. Pip retaliated by initiating a breath-holding contest, in which his opponent was not only worsted, but admitted his defeat by an involuntary and sonorous gurgle right in the middle of one of Mr. Pocklington's customary harangues on nothing in particular in the large schoolroom. He was promptly scarified for his unseemly conduct and fined three Task-Tickets.

One afternoon, to the curiosity of all and the trepidation of some, "Whistle-in" sounded at two-fifteen instead of two-twenty-five. Evidently something momentous was about to occur.

All his pupils being seated, and the roll having been called, Mr. Pocklington, with an air of portentous solemnity, explained the reason for which they were assembled and met together. It was nothing very dreadful after all, but the seriousness with which the subject was treated by their preceptor impressed the children with a hazy feeling that they were assisting at a murder trial.

Some person or persons unknown, it appeared, had invaded the Study, and had embellished the features of a bust of Julius Cæsar, which stood on the mantelpiece, with some assorted coloured chalks, which further investigation proved to have been stolen from the chalk-box by the blackboard. Mr. Pocklington, who was not blessed with a sense of humour, sought to drive home the enormity of this offence by ocular demonstration. He rang the bell; and after a short but impressive pause the door of the schoolroom was thrown open by the pageboy, and the butler staggered majestically in, carrying Julius Cæsar on a tea-tray. That empire-builder's "make-up" could hardly be called a becoming one. A red nose gave him a bibulous appearance, his blue chin suggested late rising and the absence of a razor, and a highly unsymmetrical moustache, executed in mauve chalk, stood out in vivid contrast to his blackened right eye. It says much for the impression which Mr. Pocklington's introductory harangue had produced that not a child in the room so much as smiled.

The perspiring butler having set down his alcoholic-looking burden upon a small table and withdrawn, attended by his satellite,—the only person present, by the way, who appeared inclined to regard the situation with levity,—Mr. Pocklington once more addressed his cowering audience.

"I will now ask the perpetrator of this outrage," he thundered, "to stand up, that I may punish him as he deserves."

The little girls all shivered with apprehension, but one or two little boys looked slightly amused. They were not very old or experienced, but they were not green enough to join gratuitously in a game of "Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!"

Mr. Pocklington played his next card.

"I may add," he continued, "that a boy was seen to leave the Study in a surreptitious manner shortly after this offence must have been committed. No one has entered the Study since. That boy, therefore, must be the culprit. If he does not immediately respond to the dictates of his conscience and stand up in his place—I shall expose him! Now, please!"

There was a death-like silence, suddenly broken by piercing shrieks from one Gwendoline Harvey, aged seven, for whose infant nerves the strain had proved too great.

"Please, it wasn't me," she wailed, "and—and—and I've lost my hankey!"

Tender-hearted Miss Arabella supplied the deficiency, and led her out, still sobbing. The inquisition was resumed.

"I shall give the culprit one more minute," announced Mr. Pocklington in the tones of a Grand Inquisitor.

There was another tense silence. The inmates of Wentworth House School breathed hard, looked straight before them, and waited with their small mouths wide open. One or two little girls—and small boys, for that matter—gripped the benches convulsively, and with difficulty refrained from screaming.

"The minute has elapsed," proclaimed the Grand Inquisitor. "Philip, stand up!"

"Ah!" A long, shuddering sigh, partly of relief and partly of apprehension, ran round the room. Pipette turned deathly pale. Pip rose slowly to his feet, staring intently in his disconcerting way at the besotted features of Julius Cæsar.

"Philip," said Mr. Pocklington, "you were seen coming out of the Study at one-twenty. What have you to say?"

Pip had nothing to say, but transferred his gaze to Mr. Pocklington. As a matter of fact he had not entered the Study. He had spent some time, it was true, in the passage outside the door, but that was because he was waiting for Thomas Oates, having arranged to meet him there for five minutes, for the purpose of adjusting a small difference on a matter of a purely personal character, calling for plenty of elbow-room and freedom from publicity. Tommy Oates had not appeared, and Pip had been late for luncheon in consequence.

"Do you confess to this outrage?" inquired Mr. Pocklington, coming suddenly to the point.

Pip collected himself. Then as common politeness seemed to demand some sort of reply, he said, "No."

Another slight shudder passed round the room.

"Do you know anything about the matter?"

Pip was about to reply with another negative, when it suddenly flashed across his mind that as he stood outside the Study waiting for Master Oates he had experienced considerable difficulty in getting rid of Isabel Dinting, who had hovered around him in a highly flattering but most embarrassing fashion just when he wished to compose and concentrate his faculties for his coming interview with Tommy. What was she doing there? What could her business have been? In plain truth she had come to avert a possible battle between Pip and Tommy, but this never occurred to Pip: he had not thought it possible that any one should take such a close interest in his movements. Anyhow this was no concern of his. Accordingly he said, "No" a second time.

Then came another question.

"Do you deny having been in the Study?"

"Yes."

"But you were seen coming from the passage leading to the Study door."

No answer.

"Do you admit that you were in that passage?"

"Yes." (Sensation.)

"Philip," said Mr. Pocklington, "that passage leads only to the Study. What other motive can have taken you there?"

No answer. It is difficult on the spur of the moment to frame a plausible excuse for having in cold blood arranged a sanguinary encounter outside your Principal's study door.

"Do you decline to answer?"

Again no reply from Pip. Another pause. Mr. Pocklington, now as excited as a terrier halfway down a rabbit-hole, with difficulty refrained from pronouncing sentence on the spot. However, he restrained himself so far as to remember to sum up.

"Appearances are against you, Philip," he began. "You were seen leaving the—the scene of the outrage in a suspicious manner shortly after that outrage was committed. You decline to state what business took you there. No one else visited the spot during the time under consideration—at least—by the way, did you see any one else while you—during that period?"

This chance shot hit Pip hard. That Isabel Dinting should have painted Julius Cæsar's nose red seemed almost beyond the bounds of human probability. Still she undoubtedly had been there, and with Mr. Pocklington in his present state the sudden revelation of such a fact would probably cause a perfect eruption. Pip hesitated.

"Was any one else there?" reiterated Mr. Pocklington.

Pip was essentially a truthful boy, and the idea of saying, "No" never occurred to him. Accordingly he said nothing, as before.

The eruption immediately took place.

"Philip," thundered Mr. Pocklington, "I have asked you two questions. You have answered neither of them. Do you decline to do so?"

A very long pause this time. Then—"Yes," said Pip briefly.

"In that case," replied Mr. Pocklington, metaphorically assuming the black cap, "I must pronounce you guilty. Still, I would rather you confessed than were convicted. I will give you one more minute."

Sixty palpitating seconds passed. Forty juvenile hearts bumped tumultuously, and Pip still stood up, a very straight, very silent, and not undignified little figure.

"Have you anything further to say?" inquired Mr. Pocklington at last, now almost convinced that he was the Lord Chief Justice himself.

Pip shook his head. He seldom wasted words.

"Then I pronounce you guilty. You have committed an offence against decency and good taste that I have never known paralleled in the history of this school. Your punishment"—the children held their breath—"must be a matter for consideration. Meanwhile—"

Mr. Pocklington paused, and frowned at Isabel Dinting, who was groping for something in her desk.

"Meanwhile," he continued, having suddenly decided to keep Pip in durance vile until a punishment could be devised in keeping with his crime, "you will be incarcerated—Well, Isabel?"

Isabel Dinting was standing up in her place, with her small countenance flushed and apprehensive, but bravely waving one hand in the air to attract attention. In the other she grasped a rather grubby and bulgy envelope.

"Please, may I speak to Pi—Philip?" she gasped.

Mr. Pocklington was too surprised to be pedantic.

"To Philip? Why, my child?"

"Because—well, because I've got somefing to give him."

"This is hardly the time for an exchange of gifts," remarked Mr. Pocklington severely.

"But may I?" persisted Isabel, with a boldness which surprised herself.

"I cannot imagine what your gift can be, but if it has any bearing on the present deplorable case, I should be only too thankful to permit—"

But long before this homily was completed Isabel had slipped out of her seat and was standing by Pip's side, whispering excitedly into his ear and endeavouring to thrust the grubby envelope into his hands.

"Take them," she panted. "There's thirty-five of them. Give him them all, now, and he'll let you off."

Poor little Isabel! Surely under all the broad heavens there was no crime that could not be atoned for by the surrender of thirty-five laboriously acquired Special Task-Tickets!

Pip smiled at her. He was a plain-looking little boy, but he possessed an extraordinarily attractive smile, and Isabel felt utterly, absolutely, and completely rewarded for her sacrifice.

Meanwhile Mr. Pocklington had come to the conclusion that all this was highly irregular.

"Bring me that envelope!" he commanded.

Pip handed up the envelope. Mr. Pocklington opened it, and out tumbled the thirty-five Special Task-Tickets.

"What is all this?" he inquired testily.

"Special Task-Tickets," replied Pip.

"To whom do they belong?"

"Isabel."

"No—they belong to Pip!" screamed that small maiden. "Won't you let him off if he gives them all to you, please? I've given them to him. I—I don't mind losin' them."

Isabel's voice quavered suddenly; and then, having conducted her case unflinchingly past the critical point, she dissolved, woman-like, into reactionary tears.

There was a long silence now, broken only by Isabel's sobs. Pip stood still stiffly at attention, facing the grinning effigy of Julius Cæsar. Every child in the room (except Pipette) was lost in admiration of Isabel's heroic devotion, for all knew how precious was her collection of tickets to her. Miss Mary smiled genially; Miss Amelia's eyes filled with sympathetic tears. Even Mr. Pocklington was touched. Hastily he flung together in his mind a few sentences appropriate to the occasion. "Unselfishness"—"devotion to a friend"—"a lesson for all"—the rounded phrases formed themselves upon his tongue. He was ready now.

"I cannot refrain—" he began.

It was true enough, but he got no further; for above the formal tones of his voice, above the stifled whispering of the school, and above the now unrestrained lamentations of Isabel Dinting, rose the voice of Master Thomas Oates, in a howl in which remorse, hysteria, and apprehension were about equally mingled.

"It was me!" he roared. "Booh—hoo!"

His sinful but sentimental soul, already goaded to excessive discomfort by the promptings of an officious conscience, had with difficulty endured the inquisition upon the innocent Pip, and after Isabel's romantic intervention he could contain himself no longer. Confession burst spontaneously from his lips.

"It was me!" he repeated, fortissimo, knuckling his eyes.

There was a final astonished gasp from the school.

"It was I, Thomas," corrected Mr. Pocklington, the ruling passion strong even at this crisis.

"No it wasn't!" roared Thomas, determined to purge his soul. "It was me! I was in the Study when Pip was outside, and I did it and got out when he was talking to Isabel, and—and I won't do it again. Aah—ooh!"

---

Pip became a hero, of course, but bore his honours with indifference.

Isabel expostulated with him.

"It was awful brave of you to say nothin' all the time," she remarked admiringly.

"There was nothing to say," replied Pip, with truth.

"But you said nothin' when you knew it was Tommy all the time," persisted Isabel, anxious to keep her idol on his pedestal.

"I didn't think it was Tommy," said Pip; "I thought it was you."

Isabel's round eyes grew positively owl-like.

"Me? Oh, Pip! How splendid of you!"

In his lifetime Pip inspired three women with love for him—two more than his proper allowance. Isabel was the first. The others will follow in due course.

---

CHAPTER III

"HAM"

The schoolmaster realises early in his career that he is not a universally popular person. If he keeps his boys in order and compels them to work, they dislike him heartily; if he allows them to do as they please they despise him; if he is cheerful and jocose in his demeanour, they consider him "a funny ass"; if he is austere and academic, they call him "a gloomy swine." If he endeavours, by strong measures, to call sinners to repentance, he is said to have done so from personal spite; and if he shows kindness to the few righteous persons whom he may encounter in his form, he is accused of favouritism. After he has been at school a short time he realises this, and it distresses him.

Sometimes he goes so far as to decide that he has mistaken his vocation, and he resigns and becomes a school inspector. But presently he notices that elderly and revered colleagues have laughed and grown fat under this treatment for thirty years, and indeed look upon the seething indignation of their subjects as the salt of life. This comforts him. He tries again, and presently discovers that it is possible to be the hated oppressor of his form in public and their familiar friend and trusted adviser in private. Collective hostility vanishes under the influence of a cup of tea or an evening on the river, and individual friendship takes its place. Last of all as he grows older, comes that continuous calm which marks his older colleagues: for he knows now that Jinks minor and Muggins tertius, who sit in the back row with lowering brows and grinding teeth, chafing under his tyranny and preaching sedition at intervals, will one day come and sit in his armchairs, with their feet on his mantelpiece, bearded or sunburned or distinguished, and will convey to him, if not in words, at any rate by their demeanour, their heartfelt thanks for the benefits which he lavished upon them with so unsparing a hand in the grand old days in the Shell or the Remove or the Lower Fifth. That is his reward. Men have died for less.

Now, Mr. Hanbury, lord and master of the Lower Shell, a sort of intellectual dust-heap on the Modern side at Grandwich School, was specially favoured by the gods in that he received his reward more quickly than most. He was twenty-nine; he had been a famous Cricket Blue, and he enjoyed the respectful admiration of countless boys, who listened eagerly to his small talk, felt proud when he spoke to them unofficially, and endeavoured to imitate his bowling action.

He also possessed other qualifications. He loved his work, he took immense pains to understand each of his boys, and he endeavoured by daily admonition and occasional castigation to goad his form into respectability.

For in truth they were a poor lot. Why they were called the Shell was a mystery,—the Sieve would have described them better. Large, cumbrous persons, with small heads and colossal feet, with vacant faces and incipient beards, stuck in its meshes and remained there forever, while their more youthful and slippery brethren wriggled through. Most masters resigned their posts after a year of the Lower Shell, with the result that that glorious company were constantly entrusted to the newest and rawest recruit on the staff. Consequently discipline was lax; and when the Head rather apologetically handed the form over to Mr. Hanbury, it became instantly apparent that the ultimate result would be the collapse of Hanbury or the reformation of the Shell.

The latter alternative came to pass, but not before both sides had distinguished themselves in several engagements.

Mr. Hanbury had to teach his form self-respect. Long experience had taught them that they were incapable as a body of producing good work; and being constitutionally averse to half-measures, they were accustomed, rather than turn out a second-rate article, to turn out nothing at all. Like the Tenth, who do not dance, the Lower Shell did not work.

They therefore looked upon it as a breach of academic etiquette when Mr. Hanbury violently assaulted three of their most distinguished members, for no other reason than that they, following the immemorial custom of the form, omitted for three consecutive evenings to do any "prep." With ready acumen the Shell also discovered that their new form-master had no sense of humour. Else why, when Elphinstone, commonly known as "Top-knot," let loose a blackbird from a bandbox during the history hour, and every one else present was convulsed with honest mirth, should Mr. Hanbury, with an absolutely fatuous affectation of solemnity, have made absurd remarks about teaching small boys manners, and have laid such violent hands on Elphinstone as to make it necessary for that enterprising ornithologist to take his meals from off the mantelpiece for the next three days?

Besides being a tyrant and a dullard, their form-master, they observed, was not even a gentleman. When Crabbe major, a youth of determined character and litigious habits, took the trouble to stay behind and point out to Mr. Hanbury that by depriving him (Crabbe major) of all his marks for the week for the paltry indiscretion of cribbing from Jones, Mr. Hanbury was outraging the most elementary principles of justice (Jones's involuntary aid being not worth even an hour's marks), his treatment of Crabbe was undignified and flippant to the last degree.

"Look here, my dear young Christian friend," he had said, "just cut away to your tea, and be thankful you are in a condition to sit down to it."

Crabbe disregarded the utter grossness of this innuendo.

"My people, sir," he remarked, "will not be pleased if I go home at the end of the term without any marks."

"Is that all?" replied Mr. Hanbury. "Step round to my room before your cab comes and I'll send you home all over them. Now, hook it, and don't be a young ass again."

A reply in the worst possible taste, the form decided.

Mr. Hanbury, or "Ham" as he was usually called, had been in charge of the Lower Shell some four years, and had long reduced that chaotic assembly to respectability, and even intelligence. It was the first morning of a new term, and he had just entered his classroom, and was engaged in greeting his pupils. The ceremony over, he mounted his throne and addressed the multitude,—

"Having said 'How do you do?' to all of you, I will now proceed to say 'Good-bye' to some of you. Hood down to Aitchison, you are promoted. Out you go! Mr. Mayor is anxious to make your acquaintance."

Ten sheepish youths rose up and filed out.

"Now, move up, all of you. We shall have some recruits in presently. Brown minor, you have not got your remove, but you are now in the proud position of head boy of this form. Hallo! here come our friends from the Lower Regions."

Eleven far more sheepish youths here entered the room, headed by a small boy in spectacles, who made his entrance some way ahead of his fellows with a suddenness that suggested propulsion from the rear. All took up a retired position on the back bench.

"Now, sort yourselves," continued Ham. "Old guard, close up! Then the promotions, then the new boys in alphabetical order."

This arrangement left the form in something like order. At the head sat Mr. Brown minor; at the tail a small and alert youth with black hair, a face freckled like a plover's egg, and solemn eyes.

The Commander-in-Chief addressed them,—

"Brown minor, you are unanimously elected first lieutenant. You must remind me to set preparation every night, and you will write the same on the board in a fair round hand, that he who runs for tea may read. You, sir,—let me see, Wilmot: thank you" (addressing the solemn youth at the foot of the form)—"are hereby appointed scavenger. Your duties will be explained to you by Mr. Brown. They relate chiefly to the tidiness of this room. You have obtained this important post solely because of your position in the alphabet. If you had had the misfortune to be called Atkins or Absalom, you would have failed to do so. We will now proceed to the orders of the day."

And this was Pip's first encounter with one of his lifelong friends.

The friendship did not form itself all at once. For a year they struggled together, Mr. Hanbury to find something that Pip could learn, Pip to find something that "Ham" could teach. Pip, it must be confessed, was no genius, even from Thomas Carlyle's point of view, and he retained the post of scavenger for the whole of his first year in the form. Otherwise, he was well content. He acquired friends, notably one Mumford, whose superior position in the alphabet was his sole qualification for exemption from the post of scavenger.

The duties of that official, by the way, were not arduous. He was expected to open the windows wide for two minutes between each hour, to pick up stray ink-pots, and keep the blackboard clean. There were other duties of an unofficial nature attached to the post, the chief of which was to stand with an eye glued to the keyhole until the master for the hour loomed upon the horizon, and then to herald his approach by a cry of "Cave!" whereupon the form would betake themselves to their seats with an alacrity which varied inversely with the master's reputation for indulgence.

One day Mr. Hanbury thoughtlessly came by an unexpected route, and was at the door-handle before Pip realised that he was near. Consequently Pip was thrown heavily on to his back with a contused eye; and after listening throughout the hour to facetious remarks from Ham about Sister Anne and Horatius Cocles, endured the further indignity of being kicked by a select committee of the Lower Shell, who afterwards deposed him from his high office, and appointed Mumford in his stead.

Pip's services, however, were speedily requisitioned again, for Mumford proved but a broken reed. He was by nature deliberate in his movements, and the form were more than once taken by surprise owing to their watchman's remissness at the keyhole. His last performance, that which brought Pip back to office, was of such an exceptional nature, and took the fancy of the school to such an extent, that it is to this day preserved among the unwritten archives of Grandwich, bracketed equal with the occasion on which Plumbley minor walked into the French classroom whistling, with a bandbox containing a nest of field-mice under his arm, only to discover, after liberating the mice, that the Head was sitting in the French master's place.

Mumford one day stood crouching at his keyhole. All around him surged the Lower Shell, busily employed in obliterating the traces of a brief but sanguinary combat between Jenkins and MacFarlane. The fight had arisen over some small matter of an international character, and after four spirited rounds it was decided that honours so far were equally divided, and that the final round had better be postponed until the interval before dinner. The form accordingly settled down in their places, and with a passing admonition to Mumford to persevere in his vigil, betook themselves to conversation until Ham should be pleased to put in an appearance. As that tyrant had not yet appeared at the far end of the corridor outside, Mumford decided that this was a good opportunity for retiring for a brief moment from his post to his locker, for purposes of refreshment. But fortune was against him. Mr. Hanbury had been out to see the ground-man on some cricket business, and consequently came up to his classroom by that abominable "alternative route." He entered the room quietly, and after walking to his desk was on the point of reprimanding Mumford, whose head was buried in his locker, for being out of his seat, when his words were arrested by the somewhat eccentric behaviour of that remarkable youth. Mumford left his locker, and having thrust a biscuit into his cheek, walked across the room to the door, where he bent down and applied his eye to the keyhole.

The form sat spellbound; and Mr. Hanbury was too astonished to break the silence.

Meanwhile the infatuated Mumford, having finished his biscuit, proceeded to describe to his classmates the movements of the enemy outside.

"All right!" he remarked cheerfully. "Not in sight yet—only Wilkes and Jordan. There's the Badger now. What cheer, Badger, old man?" (The Badger was the Senior Science Master.)

The form gave no sign, though Brown minor and Pip were exhibiting symptoms of incipient apoplexy; and Mr. Hanbury came to the conclusion that this comedy had better cease. But the luckless Mumford, his eye still firmly adhering to the keyhole, continued,—

"Hallo! there's the Head. Hope he meets some of those chaps. Very slack, their not goin' to their classrooms till five minutes past the hour. Wonder where Ham is. Downstairs, I expect, cadging beer off the butler. He'll probably be tight when he—"

At this point, flattered by the deferential silence with which his remarks were being received, and desirous of observing the effect of this last sally on his fellows, the doomed youth turned from the keyhole to the room. The first object which met his eye was his form-master. The effect was remarkable. Mumford's eyes, already bulging from long straining at the keyhole, nearly fell from his head; he turned deadly pale; and finally, with a whoop of terror, he dashed from the room, never stopping till he reached the seclusion of his study in his tutor's house.

He was not punished, for Ham knew well that no further penalty was required. The Lower Shell, however, unanimously voted Mumford "an abject blighter," and restored Pip to his old post.

Nearly a year passed. Pip was now fifteen. He had stayed at the preparatory school for a year longer than most boys, owing to an attack of mumps; but his appearance was so youthful and his mental abilities so limited, that he might easily have passed, as his friend Mumford frequently remarked, for twelve. Mr. Hanbury was not often puzzled by a boy's brain, but in Pip's case he had to admit himself baffled.

"I can't make the boy out," he said to his colleague, the Reverend William Mortimer (usually called "Uncle Bill"), who was Pip's house-tutor. "He has a wonderful memory, but is either unable or unwilling to think. He prefers to learn a page of easy history by heart, and repeat it like a parrot, rather than read it through and give me the substance of it in his own words."

"Anything for a change," grunted Uncle Bill. "I would cheerfully barter my entire form of imbeciles for one such youth. Look here: here is Atkinson, with the body of a camel and the mind of a hedgehog, who has been in my form for three years, and thinks that De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a good ending for a hexameter. And that boy's mother came and called on me last term for an hour and a half, and confided to me that a boy of Lancelot's eager spirit and delicate organism might be inclined to overwork himself. I suppose this other boy's mother,—no, by the way, he hasn't got one,—his father is a big West-End doctor. The boy must have been left very much to himself in his childhood. He has never read a story-book in his life, and the cricket news is all that he reads in the papers."

"Ah! is he a cricketer?" said Hanbury.

"On paper: his real performances are very moderate. He will tell you the batting and bowling average of every first-class cricketer, though."

"I don't think I have come across him in that line yet. I am glad he knows something. Well, I am off to my classroom."

"What? At this hour of the afternoon?"

"Yes; a meeting with a few young friends to discuss various points in the history of Samson. Four of them, including our young friend. Infernal rot, these Sunday preparations! The boys don't learn the work, and the average form-master can't explain it. They ought to be lumped together on Monday mornings for you to take, padre."

"Quite right, my son," replied Uncle Bill. "Last term Kifford told his form that a phylactery was a kind of musical instrument. Well, cut along. Be gentle with them."

It was a very hot afternoon in June. Hanbury found four discontented young persons awaiting him. He was wont to be lenient over the Scripture lesson, and a misplaced confidence in this fact had led the quartette to their downfall.

"Now, let us get this business finished," he said briskly. "Are you all ready to be questioned?"

The quartette expressed their readiness to endure the most searching cross-examination.

"Very well, then. Sit down quickly and write out, in your own words, an account of the events in chapter thirteen."

Four pens began to scratch, three vigorously, the last more diffidently. At the end of twenty minutes Mr. Hanbury called a halt.

"Show it up," he said.

Four inky manuscripts were laid before him.

"Let me see," he continued. "Manoah—angel—sacrifice—Nazarite—yes." He glanced swiftly through the papers. "You can go, you three; but you, my young friend,"—he laid a heavy hand on Pip's unkempt head,—"will stay and talk to me."

There was a hasty scuttling of feet, the banging of a door, and Pip was left alone with his master.

Pip sighed and glanced out of the window, through which came the regular knock, knock, of innumerable bats against innumerable balls all along the long line of nets.

"Come along to my study," said Hanbury. "No, no, I'm not going to execute you this time," as Pip looked a little apprehensive.

Mr. Hanbury occupied two rooms in a corner of Mr. Mortimer's house, and thither Pip was conducted.

"Now, young man, sit down in that armchair."

Pip obeyed, and took his seat on the extreme edge.

"You are a queer customer," said Mr. Hanbury meditatively. "You know ten times as much about that chapter as Marsh or Stokes or Fox, and yet you produced this. Look at it."

It certainly was an interesting document. Pip, unable to grasp the main facts of the simple narrative set forth, had adopted the, to him, easier expedient of learning the chapter, or portions of it, by heart. The result was a curious framework of absolutely valueless but fairly correct quotations, and an utter absence of anything in the shape of coherent information.

"And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines forty years."

"And an angel appeared unto the woman and said...."

"And the woman came to her husband and said...."

Here the manuscript came to an inky termination.

"What are these blanks for?" inquired Ham.

"I couldn't remember what they said, sir," explained Pip, "so I put blanks."

"H'm; I see. It gives their remarks rather an expurgated appearance, though. But look here, old man," he continued, not unkindly, "one quarter of the labour that you spent on learning this stuff by heart—you have got the first verse quite correct, you see—would have enabled you, if rightly applied, to give the gist of the story in your own words, which was all I wanted. Now, wouldn't it?"

Pip looked at him honestly.

"No, sir," he said.

"But, good gracious, when you read a novel—say Sherlock Holmes—do you find it easier to learn it by heart rather than gather the meaning as you go along?"

"I have never read a novel, sir," said Pip.

"Well, then, any book?"

"I have never read any books, except the ones in school, sir."

"I see I am dealing with a phenomenon," said Mr. Hanbury. "My poor friend, do you mean to say that your knowledge of books is bounded by Cæsar and Arabella Buckley? What did you do in your extreme youth? Didn't you ever read fairy tales? Haven't you heard of Cinderella or Jack the Giant-Killer?"

"No, sir."

"Why, your par—" Mr. Hanbury stopped. He remembered what Father William had told him, and he realised that home without a mother may indeed be a strange place.

There was a pause. Pip, well back in his chair now, sat looking curiously at this large man, who appeared to be genuinely distressed by his ignorance of fairy tales. Presently the master continued,—

"Then you never read anything?"

"Yes, the papers, sir."

"Come, that's better. What part?"

"All the cricket."

"Are you a keen cricketer, then?"

"I'm no good, sir, but I am keen."

"Well, trot down and change, and then we'll go to the field and I'll run over your points at a net. We will see if you are as good a cricketer as you are a scholar. Stay and have some cake first. Perhaps you will excuse me if I smoke a pipe. Masters have their vices, you see. I haven't smoked for nearly three hours."

So the pair sat, Pip with a large piece of cake balanced delicately on his knee, morbidly anxious not to spill crumbs on the floor; and Hanbury lolling back in his armchair, smoking his pipe and surveying this sturdy youth before him, who knew every cricketer's average and had never heard of Cinderella.

As Pip was changing into flannels a few minutes later he encountered Mumford.

"Come to the grub-shop," said that hero.

"Can't," said Pip shortly. "Seen the comb anywhere?"

"Comb? What for?" said Mumford, who considered parting the hair during term-time an affectation.

"My hair, of course, silly swine," replied Pip, without heat.

"You must be cracked! Come to the grub-shop," reiterated his friend.

"Can't. Promised to go to a net with Ham."

And Pip, having worked up the conversation to this artistic climax, departed, leaving Mumford, who was not an athlete, in a state of incoherent amazement.

Mr. Hanbury presently arrived at the net, with two more small boys picked up on the way. Each was given an innings, with a little helpful coaching, Pip coming last. He stood up to the bowling manfully, and occasionally slogged one of his weaker brethren; but his bat was anything but straight, and Ham bowled him at will.

"M' yes," said Mr. Hanbury, "you are only an average lot of batsmen. Can any of you bowl?"

There was a respectful chorus of "No, sir," as custom demanded.

"Well, try. I am going to have a knock."

Pip and company bowled a few laborious overs, and speedily proved that their estimate of their own powers was based upon truth, their preceptor treating their deliveries with little ceremony.

Finally they were ranged in a semicircle, and Ham gave them fielding practice.

Here Pip felt more at home. He was quick on his feet and possessed a "nippy" pair of hands. His ground fielding was especially good.

"Hallo!" cried Mr. Hanbury, as Pip got to a ball which kept low down on his left, and returned it particularly smartly; "which hand did you throw in that ball with, young man?"

Pip surveyed two grubby paws doubtfully.

"I think it was my left, sir," he said apologetically. "I can't help it sometimes."

"Ambidextrous, eh? Catch this. Now, throw it in again—left hand."

Pip did so, wondering.

"Do you ever bowl left-handed?" was the next inquiry.

"No, sir."

"Well, just come to a net for a few minutes. You other people can cut off to tea now."

The tea-bell had just rung, and the field was emptying rapidly.

"Now, my son," said the master, "you are going to bowl to me with your left hand. Plug them in."

Pip did so. His first ball was a fast half-volley, and was promptly treated as it deserved.

"Now, another. Take my ball. The groundboy will field yours."

Pip, full of importance at having some one to field for him, bowled again. This time he sent down a good length ball. Mr. Hanbury stepped out to it, played right outside it, and next moment his leg-stump was lying on the ground. He was clean bowled.

---

CHAPTER IV

PIP FINDS HIS VOCATION

Mr. Hanbury made no comment, but requested Pip to bowl again. "A good fast one," he said.

Pip, with the most natural air in the world, obeyed orders. This time he bowled a yorker, somewhere in the direction of the off-stump. Mr. Hanbury did not trouble to play it, but chopped his bat down into the block-hole to stop it. The ball, however, chiefly owing to the fact that it curled some inches in the air, missed his bat and bowled him off his pads.

"One more," said Ham.

Pip, divided between elation at bowling a master and apprehension as to the consequences thereof, delivered his fourth ball—a full pitch to the off this time. Bad ball as it was, the curl in the air was most apparent; but Ham, who took the measure of most bowling after the third ball, stepped across, and, playing apparently about three inches inside it, caught it fairly and sent it flying.

"That will do, thanks," he said. "Now, run off to tea, but drop into my study after prayers for a minute."

Pip made his appearance very promptly after prayers.

Mr. Hanbury, who was smoking and correcting exercises, nodded to a chair, and after a few minutes' silence, broken by sundry grunts and the thud of a merciless blue pencil, put down his work and addressed Pip.

"Now, my man, I want to have a word with you. You are what is known as a natural bowler. Why you didn't find it out for yourself I can't think. Didn't you, in your extreme infancy, often feel an inclination to stir your porridge with your left hand?"

Pip reflected; and sundry nursery incidents, of no previous import, suddenly acquired a new significance in his mind.

"Yes, sir," he said, "I did. But my nur—my people used to tell me not to, and I got out of the way of it, I suppose."

"They always do it," said Ham sympathetically. "Now, listen. A man may be the fastest and straightest bowler in the world, but unless he has pitch he has nothing, nothing, nothing! A straight ball is no good if it is a long hop or a full pitch, and the only way to acquire the art is to practise and practise and practise until you can drop the ball on a threepenny-bit at twenty yards. Now, if I take you for half an hour at a net after tea for the next few weeks, will you agree to do something for me in return?"

Pip agreed, without asking what the conditions might be.

"What I want you to do," said Ham, "is this." He led the way to the bookshelves at the side of the room. "I want you to read some books for me. Any books will do, but you must read something. I should advise you to begin on something easy. Here are three. This one is called 'Treasure Island'; this big one is 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'; and the yellow one is 'Vice Versâ.' (Don't be afraid: it's all English inside.) Which will you have?"

Pip was somewhat dazed by this eccentric man's behaviour, but he had sufficient sense left to choose the smallest of the proffered volumes. Then he said timidly,—

"Would I have any chance of getting into the Junior House Eleven, sir?"

"M' well, perhaps. Now, hook it. After tea to-morrow at my net, mind."

Later in the evening Mr. Hanbury, enjoying the hospitality of Uncle Bill, remarked,—

"I'm sorry the St. Dunstan's match is over for this year."

"Why?" inquired his host.

"Because we could have beaten them. Anyhow, we shall do it next year."

"Why this confidence?"

"Because," said Hanbury, "I propose this day month to introduce to the school the finest bowler that it has seen since old Hewett's time."

Pip stuck to his side of the bargain manfully. He religiously waded through "Treasure Island," marking with a pencil the place when he knocked off work for the day. The fascination of the story affected even his barbaric mind, but the effort of taking it all in more than outweighed the pleasure. "Sherlock Holmes" he voted dull; he made no conjectures as to the solution of each mystery, and consequently the pleasure of anticipating the result was lost to him. "Vice Versâ" pleased him most, though the idea of a girl running at large in a boys' school struck his celibate mind as "utter rot."

But in return for all this aimless drudgery he had the unspeakable joy of bowling to Ham every night for a short time after tea, at a quiet net in a corner of the big field. The term was not nearly half over, and already he could bring the ball down with tolerable certainty somewhere near a postcard laid for him upon the pitch, five times out of seven,—and that, too, without in any way spoiling the curl in the air by which his teacher appeared to set so much store. He was also permitted to bowl one fast ball per over, an indulgence which comforted him mightily; for like every other cricketer who ever lived, he imagined that he was a heaven-sent fast bowler.

To his unutterable disappointment he was not chosen for his Junior House Eleven, though it included such confirmed dotards as Mumford. The truth was that Mr. Hanbury had sent for Marsh, the captain of Pip's house, and asked as a personal favour that Pip might not be put in the team.

"I know these Junior House-Matches," he said. "The boy will either not be put on to bowl at all, or else he will be kept on for forty or fifty overs, tiring himself out and undoing all the work of the past five weeks. Leave him with me for another fortnight, and we'll see. I can't have growing plants strained in any way."

"Is he really good, sir?" said Marsh. "I haven't seen him play for a long time, and then he seemed no better than most of the other kids."

"That was when he was bowling right-handed," said Ham. "Come and see him to-morrow, at my net. Look here, I will make a bargain with you. When is the House-Match proper, the Final, the big affair, between you and the Hittites?"

"A fortnight on Tuesday, sir."

"Well, you may play him in that match, on the understanding that he is not to bowl for more than five overs at a time. I'll have him in good order for you, but he mustn't be overworked."

Marsh, after a glance at Pip's form at Ham's net next day, readily agreed to the proposition.

A week later Pip was informed by Mumford, during the French hour, of a curious clerical error in the list containing the names of the Hivite House Eleven, which had been put up that morning. Marsh, it appeared, in a fit of laughable absent-mindedness, had filled the last place in the list with the name of Pip, instead of that of one Elliot, who had occupied that position in the previous round.

"Rum mistake to make," said Mumford, with obvious sincerity.

"Very," said Pip shortly.

"Rather a jest," continued the imaginative Mumford, "if he didn't notice it, and you turned out on the day with the rest of the Eleven instead of Elliott!"

"Jolly comic!" said Pip, without enthusiasm. He was a modest youth, but, like other and older men, he derived no pleasure from hearing his low opinion of himself so heartily endorsed by his friends.

However, his name remained on the list, and on the great day he did turn out with the Eleven, going in last and being bowled first ball, much to the gratification of Mr. Elliott.

The Hivites made a hundred and seventy-eight,—not a bad score, as house-matches go. Then the Hittites took the field. They sent in a red-headed youth named Evans, and a long, lean individual who rejoiced in the thoroughly incongruous nickname of "Tiny." He played with an appallingly straight bat, but seldom took liberties with the bowling.

The opening of the innings was not eventful. House-matches are very much alike as a class. Everybody knows everybody else's game to a nicety, and the result is usually a question of nerves. Tiny and Evans poked systematically and exasperatingly at every ball sent down; the clumps of dark-blue Hittites and pink Hivites round the field subsided into recumbent apathy; and Pip, who was fielding at short slip, began to feel that if house-matches were all as dull as this one he might get through without further disgracing himself.

But Marsh, the bowler, was also a cricketer. He saw that Evans, who was not naturally a defensive player, was getting very tired of poking to order, and resolved to tempt him. He accordingly sent down one of the worst balls ever seen on the school pitch. Evans wavered for a moment, but, remembering his orders, let it go by. It was followed by another, exactly like it: once again Evans restrained his itching bat. But the third was too much for him, and he smote it incontinently over the ropes, to the huge delight of the Hittites.

"Now he's got his eye in!" remarked Master Simpson of the Hittites to Master Mumford, who was sitting beside him on the railings.

"Rot!" replied that youth, as in duty bound, but without conviction. "Any ass could see that Marsh gave him that ball on purpose."

"On purpose? What for?" inquired Simpson doubtfully.

"What a question to ask!" replied Mumford, casting about for an answer. "Of course you don't know enough about the game, but the reason why Marsh bowled that particular ball was—Hooray! Hoor-a-a-ay-ee-ah-ooh! Well held, sir! What did I say, young Simpson?"

For Evans, throwing caution to the winds, had lashed out at a good ball, the last of Marsh's over, and it was now reposing safely in the hands of Mid-off.

Another disaster befell the Hittites a few minutes later. Tiny, who had been stepping out and playing forward with the irritating accuracy of an automaton, played just inside a ball from the Hivite fast bowler, Martin. The ball glanced off his bat, and almost at the same moment Pip became conscious of a violent pain, suggestive of red-hot iron, in his right arm-pit. He clapped his hand to the part affected, and to his astonishment drew forth the ball, to a storm of applause from the delighted Hivites, while Tiny retired, speechless and scarlet, to the Pavilion.

But trouble was in store for the Hivites. The two new batsmen were the opposing captain, one Hewett, a smiter of uncompromising severity, and a somewhat amorphous and pimply youth, destitute of nerves, who was commonly addressed as "Scrabbler." These twain treated the firm of Marsh and Martin with a disrespect that amounted almost to discourtesy. The score rose from forty-five to a hundred, and from a hundred to a hundred and thirty-five, notwithstanding the substitution of two fresh bowlers of established reputation and fair merit. The Hivites began to look unhappy. Their fielding, which hitherto had been well up to the mark, now deteriorated; and when the Scrabbler was missed at the wicket from a snick that was heard all over the ground, Master Simpson became so offensive that Mumford found it necessary to withdraw out of earshot.

At this point Marsh, having obeyed the law which says that when your first-eleven colour-men have failed, you must try your second-eleven colour-men; and when you have done that, you may begin to speculate on outsiders, decided to put Pip on. He accordingly tossed him the ball at the beginning of the next over.

Pip had been living for this moment ever since his name had appeared in the list, and he had carefully rehearsed all the movements necessary to the occasion. He would pick up the ball negligently, hand his cap to the umpire, and place his field with a few comprehensive motions of his arm. He would then toss down a few practice balls to the wicket-keeper, and, after a final glance round the field, proceed to bring the Hittite innings to an inglorious conclusion.

But, alas! whether it was from insufficient rehearsal, or blue funk, Pip's performance was a dreadful failure. He forgot to hand his cap to the umpire; he made no attempt to place his field; and so far was he from casting cool glances around him before commencing his onslaught that he was only prevented, by the heavy hand of the adjacent Scrabbler, from beginning to bowl before the fielders had crossed over.

And when he did begin, the ball which was to have made a crumbling ruin of Hewett's wicket proved to be a fast full-pitch to leg; the second ball was a long-hop to the off; and the third, which had originally been intended to complete Pip's hat-trick, nearly annihilated the gentleman who was fielding point. Marsh was very patient, and made no comment as ball after ball was despatched to the boundary. He would have liked to give the boy time to find his feet, but this sort of thing was too expensive. After two inglorious overs Pip retired once more to second slip, with his inscrutable countenance as inscrutable as ever, but his heart almost bursting beneath his white shirt, with shame and humiliation and a downright grief. It was the first tragedy of his life.

But he had his revenge a moment later. The Scrabbler, with a pretty late cut, despatched a fast ball from Martin straight to Pip. Pip automatically clapped his heels together and ducked down to the ball, but just a moment too late. He felt the ball glance off each instep and pass behind him. The Scrabbler's partner, seeing that Pip had not stopped the ball, called to him to come; then, seeing that the ball had only rolled a few yards, called to him to go back. But Pip by this time had reached the ball. The Scrabbler made a frantic leap back into safety. Pip's long arm shot out, and as the batsman hung for a moment between heaven and earth in his passage back to the crease, he saw wickets and bails disintegrate themselves in wild confusion in response to a thunderbolt despatched from Pip's left hand at a range of six yards.

The partnership was over at last, and the Hittites offered little more resistance. They were all out in another half hour, for a total of two hundred and fifteen,—a score long enough to cause the Hivites to confer gloomily among themselves and ignore the unseemly joy of the Hittites. So play ended for the day.

The match was to be resumed on the following Thursday, two days later. On Wednesday evening Ham sat smoking in his room. He was expecting Pip, who generally chose that time for returning works of fiction. On this occasion Pip was rather long in coming, and when he did come he was not the usual Pip. He had not encountered his form-master in private since the house-match, and was uncertain of his reception. Only the strictest sense of duty brought his faltering feet to Mr. Hanbury's door, and it was with downcast eye and muffled voice that he proffered "Handley Cross" in exchange for "The Jungle Book."

Ham knew his man, and discreetly avoided cricketing topics for the first five minutes. He talked of Mr. Jorrocks, of Mowgli, of the weather—of anything, in fact, rather than half-volleys and full-pitches. It was Pip, with his usual directness, who opened the subject.

"Do you think it will keep fine, sir?"

"Sweltering hot, I expect."

There was an awkward pause. Then Pip said—

"I'm—I'm awfully sorry, sir."

Hanbury understood, and he glowed inwardly to think that the first feeling of this small boy, whose very soul was wrung by the knowledge that he had received his first chance in life and thrown it away, should be one of regret for having disappointed his teacher rather than one of commiseration for himself. Mr. Hanbury was still young and very human, and he felt glad that he had read Pip aright, and not pinned his faith to the wrong sort of boy.

"My dear man," he said, "you did exactly what I expected you to do—no more and no less. You bowled erratically and fielded splendidly." (The idea that he had fielded well had never occurred to Pip.) "I was sorry about the bowling, but I knew you must go through the experience. The best bowler in the world never remembered to bowl with his head his first match. He just did what you did—shut his eyes and plugged them in as hard as he could."

Pip nodded. That was exactly what he had done.

"That's what I meant when I told you the other day that your education was not half completed. I meant that you might be able to knock over a stump at a net all day and yet not be able to keep your head before a crowd. You will do well now you have found your feet. You fielded like a man yesterday, and you'll bowl like a demon to-morrow. I expect great things of you, so keep your tail up, young man, and—By Jove, I promised to see Mr. Mortimer before nine! Excuse me a moment."

Ham bolted from the room.

For Pip, the imperturbable, the impenetrable, was—horresco referens—in tears! After all, he was barely fifteen, and he had endured a good deal already—the quiet disappointment of Marsh, the thinly veiled scorn of the deposed Elliott, and the half-amused contempt of the rest of the house. He had taken them all in his usual impassive way, and the critics who gathered in knots after the game and condemned Marsh for putting "an absolute kid" into the House Eleven, never suspected that the "kid" in question was struggling, beneath an indifferent exterior, between an intense desire for sympathy and a stubborn determination not to show it. And so these words from his beloved Ham, from whom he had expected at the best disappointed silence, brought to his overwrought soul that relief which he so badly needed; and a large tear, trickling down his nose, warned Mr. Hanbury to remember a pressing engagement elsewhere.

Pip soon recovered.

"Lucky Ham had to go out then," he soliloquised, "or he'd have seen me blub."

Ham returned after a discreet interval, and after a few words of wisdom and encouragement dismissed Pip to bed in a greatly improved frame of mind.

---

The Hivites began their second innings thirty-seven runs to the bad. This fact had impressed itself upon the mind of Marsh, the captain, and he decided, in his vigorous way, that if anything was to be done he must do it himself. He accordingly went in first, accompanied by a confirmed "stone-waller," and proceeded to break the hearts of the Hittite bowlers. Nothing could shake the steadiness of the two players. The most beautiful balls were sent down to them—balls which pitched halfway and wavered alluringly, waiting to be despatched to square-leg, half-volleys, full-pitches, wides; but nothing would tempt them to take liberties. Marsh played sound cricket, and made runs; but his companion played a purely defensive game, his performance being accentuated by a series of sharp knocks, or dull thuds, according as he played the ball with his bat or his body. The arrears had been exactly wiped off when this hero, in endeavouring to interpose as much of his adamantine person as possible between his wicket and a leg-break, lurched heavily backwards and mowed down all three stumps. He retired amid applause.

But the Hivites were not out of the wood. The next two batsmen succumbed rather unluckily, the one leg-before, the other caught at the wicket,—the two ways in which no batsman is ever really out,—and a rot set in. Marsh, it was true, was playing the innings of his life. All bowling seemed to come alike to him, and he usually contrived to score a single at the end of the over and so prolonged the lives of his various fluttered partners. But he could not do everything, and when Pip came in last, the score was only a hundred and five, of which Marsh had made seventy.

Pip's previous performance had not been such as to justify any unbounded confidence in his supporters; but he certainly shaped better this time. He had a good eye, and by resolutely placing his bat in the path of the approaching ball he achieved the twofold result of keeping up his wicket and goading the bowlers to impotent frenzy. Once he survived a whole maiden over, though he was bombarded with long hops, tempted with slows, and intimidated with full-pitches directed at his head. He stood perfectly still; the ball rebounded from his tough young person again and again; and now and then, when the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection were very obtuse indeed, he and Marsh ran a leg-bye. The score crept up, Marsh began to get near his century, and the Hivites again plucked up heart.

After batting for nearly a quarter of an hour, Pip, much to his own surprise, scored a run—four, to be precise—due to an entirely inadvertent snick to the off boundary. This brought the score up to a hundred and thirty. Directly afterwards Marsh completed his hundred, with a mighty drive over the ropes, and "e'en the ranks of Tuscany," as Uncle Bill observed, "could scarce forbear to cheer."

After that Marsh, feeling uncertain as to how long his companion intended to stay, determined to make hay while the sun shone. Accordingly he began to hit. Four fours in one over brought on a slow bowler, who had to be taken off again as soon as possible; for even Pip despised him, and pulled one of his off-balls to square-leg for three. But this state of affairs was too good to last. Marsh, who had been smiting all and sundry since completing his hundred, ran out to a slow ball from the Hittite captain and missed it. The wicket-keeper whipped off the bails in a flash, and the innings was over. The full score was a hundred and fifty-seven, of which Marsh had made a hundred and seventeen. Pip scored seven, not out.

Verily, this was a match. The Hittites only wanted a hundred and twenty to win; but a hundred and twenty is a big figure to compile out of the fourth innings of a house-match, when nerves are snapping like fiddle-strings. However, it was generally considered that the Hittites would win by about five wickets, and Master Simpson, by wagering an ingenious musical instrument, composed mainly of half a walnut-shell and a wooden match (invaluable for irritating nervous masters), against two fives-balls and a moribund white mouse belonging to Mumford, in support of his own house, had just brought himself within the sphere of operations of the Anti-Gambling League, when the Hivites went out to the field for the last time.

Marsh had found an opportunity for a hurried consultation with Mr. Hanbury.

"It's no use your going on to bowl at present," said his adviser. "You can't knock up a hundred and expect to take wickets directly afterwards."

"Whom shall I begin with, sir? I thought of Martin and Watkins."

"Watkins is a broken reed, but he'll last for three overs. Take him off soon, and if you are not ready yourself, give our young friend Pip another trial."

Marsh cocked a respectful but surprised eye at his master.

Hanbury saw the look. "You'll find him a very different performer now," he said. "That little bit of batting will have steadied him nicely. But don't keep him on too long, even though he takes wickets. Give him a rest after five overs, and put him on again later. Make him place his own field: the experience will be useful to him."

Things turned out pretty well as Mr. Hanbury had prophesied. Martin, a steady performer, kept the runs down at his end; and Watkins, the broken reed, bowled exactly three good overs, in the second of which he removed the Hittite captain's leg-bail with a ball which, as Uncle Bill observed, "would have beaten the Old Man himself." After that he fell away, and having been hit three times for four in his fourth over, was taken off.

Marsh was still feeling the effects of his innings, and decided to take another ten minutes' rest. He accordingly electrified players and spectators alike by tossing the ball to Pip.

"We shall win by nine wickets now," said Master Simpson with decision—"not five."

"My dear ass," replied Mumford, "he's only put Pip on for an over to let Martin change ends."

"Well, if he bowls as he did last innings Martin won't get the chance, 'cause Pip will give us all the runs we want in one over. Let's see: six sixes are thirty-six, say ten wides, and—all right, lousy swine!"

This last remark was delivered from a nettle-bed behind the railings, and its warmth was due to the fact that the speaker had been neatly tilted backwards by a well-directed jog from the incensed Mr. Mumford's elbow.

But Pip had no intention of giving away runs this time. He was proud of the confidence in him that had been shown; he was burning to retrieve the disgrace of his last performance; and, best of all, his glorious spell of batting had soothed his nerves and accustomed him to public appearances. He arranged his field quietly, sent a couple of balls down to the wicket-keeper, and even remembered to hand his cap to the umpire.

There was a hush all around the ground as he ran up to the wicket to deliver his first ball.

Things were certainly in a critical state. Of the hundred and twenty runs required to win, the Hittites had obtained forty-five for the loss of one wicket. If the present pair could add another thirty before being separated the match was practically safe. It was felt that Marsh was playing a desperate game in risking everything on the efforts of such a tyro as Pip; and when the Scrabbler took his stand and prepared to punish his presumptuous folly, the Hittites made ready to shout, and the Hivites to decamp to their house.

Pip's head was quite clear this time. His first two balls were to be as straight as possible and a good length; the third, if possible, was to be a fast yorker; the fourth, a good length ball; the fifth, slow and curly; and the last, Ham had told him, could be anything he pleased.

He delivered his first ball as per programme. The Scrabbler stepped well out to it, calculating, with his long reach, to be able to smother it comfortably. Much to his surprise his bat met with no resistance, for he had planted it quite two inches outside. The ball passed between his bat and his legs, whizzed past the leg stump, and was in the wicket-keeper's hands in a moment. The bails were whipped off, and the Scrabbler, who had dragged his foot right over the crease in his tremendous lunge forward, was out, stumped as neatly as possible.

A mighty shout went up as the Scrabbler retired. Two for forty-five.

Another batsman took his place. Pip delivered a ball almost identical with the first. This time the batsman, a stumpy person, not possessed of the Scrabbler's reach, played back, and succeeded in returning the ball to the bowler. Pleased with this success, and desiring to repeat it, he made the fatal mistake of deciding on his next stroke before the ball was bowled. Consequently he played back to a fast yorker, which, you will remember, came third on Pip's schedule. When he turned round his middle stump was lying on the ground, and the wicket-keeper was groping ecstatically for the bails.

Three for forty-five.

The next man was the heavy hitter of the eleven. It was his custom to smite every ball sent down, including the first, with uncompromising severity. On this occasion, however, he was sufficiently impressed with the solemnity of the occasion to endeavour to block the first ball, which was Pip's fourth,—a straight, good-length, orthodox delivery, rather on the short side. The ball rebounded from his rigid bat, and Point just failed to reach it. A little shudder ran round the ground. The slogger, observing his escape, came to the conclusion that he might as well be outed for a slogger as a poker, and lashed out widely at ball number five, which was a slow and curly one. Now, since Pip, who felt the real bowling instinct, which tells a man what the batsman expects (and prompts him to bowl something entirely different), surging up hotter and stronger in his brain every moment, bowled when still a good two yards behind the crease, the lash-out came much too soon, and the slogger's bat was waving wildly in the air what time his bails were being disturbed by a beautiful curly ball which bumped, very very gently, into his off-stump.

Four for forty-five.

There was no mistaking the shout that arose now. Previous vocal efforts had merely expressed pleased surprise at a good piece of bowling, and had voiced the gratifying fact that the Hivites, though about to be beaten, would not be disgraced; but the tornado which now rent the heavens signified that Pip had set the match on its legs again.

Our hero had now bowled five balls, all with his head. He had been holding himself in, bowling not as he wanted to bowl, but as Ham had told him to bowl, and as he knew in his heart of hearts he ought to bowl. But now he was to have his sixth ball, which he was permitted to bowl in any way he pleased. Ham should see something!

His mentor was sitting under the trees with Uncle Bill.

"What will the infant phenomenon give us this time?" inquired the reverend gentleman.

"Something terrifically fast, probably to leg," replied Mr. Hanbury, who knew human nature.

He was right. The ball caught the batsman a resounding crack on the back of the thigh, and sped away to the boundary for four—a leg-bye. So ended Pip's first over.

Martin now resumed at his end. Evans, who had been a horrified and helpless spectator of his companions' downfall, played him in a cautious manner, as became the occasion, intending to sneak a run at the end of the over and so face the redoubtable Pip himself. But it was not to be. In his anxiety to obtain the necessary run he attempted to hit a ball which he knew should have been let alone, and was caught at cover-point. Five for forty-nine.

Once more it was Pip's turn. He found himself confronted by another hard slogger, who, instead of sticking to his last, trusting to his eye, and running out to hit, stood stock-still, and having solemnly planted his bat in what he imagined was the path of the ball, awaited developments. The ball, curling like a boomerang, pitched slightly to leg, broke back, and bowled him. Six for forty-nine.

The frenzy of the Hivites was becoming almost monotonous, and it was hardly capable of augmentation when Pip bowled another man with his next ball, bringing his analysis up to five wickets for no runs.

"The match is over," said Uncle Bill; "but it will be interesting to see if he keeps it up to the end."

"'Not for competition, but for exhibition only'—now," murmured Hanbury dreamily.

The next man held his bat firmly in the block-hole, as the best means of combating the third ball of the over,—the fast yorker,—and with the assistance of short-slip, who received the ball in the pit of his stomach and incontinently dropped it, disappointed the entire field, friend and foe alike, by spoiling Pip's hat-trick. The batsman, a person of unorthodox style, having succeeded in despatching a yorker to slip, decided that the best place for a good length ball would be long-leg. He accordingly stepped in front of his wicket for the purpose of carrying his intention into effect; but the ball, much to his surprise and indignation, evaded the all-embracing sweep of bat and hit him hard on both shins, with the result that he was very properly given out leg-before-wicket.

The spectators now realised that the match was as good as over; but curiosity to see how much longer Pip would continue his extraordinary entertainment glued them to the spot. Pip himself had lost all consciousness of the presence of others. All his little soul was concentrated on one idea—to get the last two wickets with the two balls remaining to him.

The last batsman but one took his place, and Pip bowled his slow ball. The batsman watched it as he had been told to do, and decided in a weak moment that it was going to be a good length ball on the off. This being the case, he proposed to make use of his only stroke, a rather elaborate flourish, which, if it could be engineered at precisely the right moment, occasionally came off as a late cut. The one error into which this lightning calculator fell was the belief that the ball would pitch off the wicket. It pitched absolutely straight, got up remarkably quickly, and, almost before the flourish was half over, bowled him. Nine for forty-nine.

The last man walked out slowly, but he had reached the wicket before Pip noticed him. For Pip was plunged in thought: he had once more arrived at the last ball of the over, the ball that he was to bowl in any way he pleased. A good deal—nay, everything—depended upon it. He was determined to bowl no more full-pitches to leg. A yorker, if straight, would almost certainly settle the fate of this last trembling creature; but then yorkers are not always straight. A good length ball, on the other hand, would probably be blocked.

"Man in," said the umpire, and suddenly Pip made up his mind.

"His sixth ball!" remarked Uncle Bill under the trees. "What will it be this time, I wonder?"

"If he wants to do the hat-trick," said Hanbury, "he must take some risks. No good giving this fellow a length ball. He'll only block it. Pip'll have to tempt him."

And that is what Pip did. He bowled a very short ball, a very bad ball, a long-hop unspeakable, on the off side. Now, the batsman was expecting a good ball, and was prepared to present to it an immovable bat. But this thing, this despicable object which lobbed up so temptingly, ought he to spare it? "Take no risks," Hewett had said; but then Hewett was not expecting this demon bowler to send down tosh like this. Should he? Could he? Yes—no—yes! He raised his bat uncertainly, and made a half-hearted pull at the ball. It struck his bat somewhere on the splice,—the curl in the air had deceived one more victim,—flew up into the air, and, when it descended, found Pip waiting for it with a pair of hands that would at that moment have gripped a red-hot cannonball.

So the innings ended for forty-nine, and the Hivites won by seventy-one runs. In two overs Pip had taken eight wickets (doing the hat-trick incidentally) for no runs. Verily, in a house-match all things are possible. He never accomplished such a feat again, though his seven wickets for seven runs against the Australians ten years later, and his four wickets in four balls, on that historic occasion when the Gentlemen beat the Players by an innings, were relatively far greater performances.

He turned mechanically to the umpire and took his cap, and was in the act of unrolling his sleeves, when he was suddenly caught up, whirled aloft, and carried off towards the pavilion by a seething wave of frenzied Hivites. Those enthusiasts who were debarred from supporting any portion of him contented themselves with slapping outlying parts of his person and uttering discordant whoops.

Somewhere beneath his left arm-pit Pip discovered the inflamed countenance of Master Mumford.

"Where's young Simpson?" he screamed in that worthy's ear, not so much because he wished to know as to relieve the extreme tension of the situation.

It was a senseless and inappropriate question, but it appeared to bring Mumford's cup of happiness to overflowing point. Laying his uncombed head upon Pip's horizontal stomach, with tears of joy streaming down his cheeks, he gasped,—

"H-he went down to the house to g-get his k-kodak as soon as y-you were put on bowling, so as to phuph-photograph the winning hit. And oh, he s-said they would w-win by nine wickets! He h-hasn't got back yet."

But he was wrong. There stood Master Simpson, ready to photograph the winning hit. But, like the Briton and the sportsman that he was, he made the best of a bad job and photographed Pip instead. And an enlarged copy of that snapshot hangs in Pip's smoking-room to-day, to witness if I lie.

---

CHAPTER V

LINKLATER

I

Linklater came to school after Pip,—one year, to be precise,—but by the time that both had attained to the dignity of seniors they were firm friends. They were a curiously assorted couple. Pip at the age of eighteen was as inscrutable and reserved as ever, though his popularity with the school was unbounded, and his influence, when he chose to exert it, enormous. He had already been a member of the Eleven for three years, and should by rights this year have been captain. But alas! though Pip had been duly washed by the high tides of promiscuous September promotions out of the all-glorious Lower Shell into the Upper Shell, and from the Upper Shell by the next inundation into the Fifth, he had not as yet qualified for a Monitorship.

Linklater was a handsome, breezy, rather boisterous youth, quick of tongue and limber of limb. He possessed his fair share of brains, but not the corresponding inclination to use them; and he was a natural athlete of the most attractive type,—a graceful mover, a pretty bat, and a beautiful racquets player. But somehow he was not universally popular. Everybody was his friend, it is true, but that was chiefly because nobody cares to be the avowed antagonist of a man who possesses a sharp tongue and no scruples about using it, especially when these gifts are backed by such undoubted assets as membership of the Fifteen and Eleven. There was something not quite right about Linklater. Perhaps he was too grownup in his manners. He was popular, too, with masters, which is not invariably a good sign in a boy.

Still, he was not quite so grownup at eighteen as when he first came to Grandwich; and thereby hangs a tale.

At every public school there are certain things—each school has its own list—which are "not done." Not done, that is, until one has achieved fame,—until one is a "blood," or a "dook," or a "bug" (or whatever they call it at your school, sir); until a boy has fought his way into that aristocracy—the most exclusive aristocracy in the world—in which brains, as such, count for nothing, birth has no part, and wealth is simply disregarded; where genuine ability occasionally gains a precarious footing, and then only by disguising itself as something else; but to which muscle, swiftness of foot, and general ability to manipulate a ball with greater dexterity than one's neighbour is received unquestioningly, joyfully, proudly. Dear old gentlemen, who are brought down to distribute the prizes after lunch on Speech Day, invariably point to Simpkins major, who has obtained a prize for Greek Iambics and another for Latin Prose, as the summit of the scholastic universe; and they beseech Simpkins's "fellow-scholars" not to be down-hearted because they are not like Simpkins. "We do not all get—er—ten talents, boys," observes the old gentleman soothingly, with a half-deferential bob towards the Head, as if to apologise for quoting Scripture before a clerical authority. He next proceeds to hold out strong hopes to his audience that if they work hard they may possibly—who knows?—come some day to resemble Simpkins major. At this all the parents, forgetful of their own youth, applaud, and the "fellow-scholars," about fifty per cent of whom do not know Simpkins by sight, while the remainder seldom meet him in a passage without kicking him, grin sheepishly, and take it out of Simpkins afterwards. The real heroes of the school, if only the dear old gentleman would realise, or remember, the fact, are those rather dull-looking youths, with incipient moustaches and large chests, who sit cracking nuts in the back row.

But this is by the way. Let us return to the things which are "not done" by the proletariat. The following are a few extracts from the unwritten but rigid code of Grandwich:—

1. You must wear your tie in a sailor's knot—not in a bow.

2. A new boy must not speak to any one unless spoken to first.

3. You must not shave until you are in the Fifteen or Eleven; after that you must shave every Saturday night, whether you need it or not.

There was a merciful proviso attached to the last remarkable enactment—namely, that all whose growth of hair had outrun their social status might shave to an extent sufficient to make them presentable, provided that the operation did not take place in public. Consequently many undistinguished but hairy persons were compelled to shave in bed at night after the gas was out. I have often wondered what their mothers would have thought if they had known. Fortunately there is much in our lives that our mothers never hear of. If they did, public schools (among many other things) would cease to exist.

Now, Linklater, who, as has been already mentioned, was a precocious youth,—a typical cock-of-the-walk from a preparatory school,—spent his first few weeks at Grandwich in running foul of all the most cherished traditions of that historic foundation. He arrived in a neat bowtie, and proceeded to wear the same, despite the pointed criticisms of a multitude of counsellors, for the space of a week; at the end of which period it was taken from his neck by a self-appointed committee of the Lower Fourth. Finding that his eccentricities were earning him a certain amount of unpopularity, Linklater decided, like the born opportunist that he was, to allay popular feeling by a timely distribution of largesse. He accordingly paid a visit to the school tuck-shop, where he expended two shillings and sixpence on assorted confectionery. On his way back he encountered no less a person than Rumsey, the captain of the Eleven, and, feeling that he might as well conciliate all classes while he was about it, cried, "Catch, there!" and launched the largest sweet he could find in the bag in the direction of Rumsey. The feelings of that potentate on receiving a marron glacé in the middle of his waistcoat from a diminutive fag deprived him for the moment of all power to move or speak, so that the unconscious Linklater, passing on unscathed, lived to tell the tale, and subsequently to hear it told and retold by hysterical raconteurs to delighted audiences for months afterwards.

"Heard the latest about that new bloke?" inquired Master Mumford of Pip one evening, under cover of the continuous hum of conversation which always characterised "prep" in the Hivite house.

"What new bloke?"

"Linklater. Seen him?"

Yes, Pip had seen him at nets that day, and had noticed that he was a jolly neat bat.

"Notice his boots?" pursued Mumford.

"Can't say I did."

"Well, they were white!"

Master Mumford fairly overflowed with happy laughter at the richness of the jest. The wearing of white buckskin boots was one of the privileges of the First Eleven, and Linklater had run counter to custom and habit again.

"Oh," said Pip, "I suppose he didn't know."

This childishly lenient view of the case did not appeal to Mumford, who, with all the small-minded man's respect for the letter of the law, was thirsting to punish the evildoer.

"Beastly side!" he ejaculated, "that's all. We are going to fill them with soap and water after prep, and put a notice beside them telling him not to stick on so much of it. I'm writing it now. How many e's are there in beastly?"

"Dunno," replied Pip shortly.

"Will you come and help?"

"No. He looks rather a decent chap. He's only been here a week; he may not know about white boots."

"Ought to, then," snapped the bloodthirsty Mumford. "Other people find things out all right."

"Not all," grunted Pip. "How about stamps?"

Master Mumford turned his back with some deliberation, and addressed himself severely to the labours of composition. Once, during his first week at Grandwich, he had called at the Head Master's, and having, after a wordy encounter with an unexpected butler in the hall, succeeded in pushing his way into the study, had endeavoured, in faithful pursuance of the custom in vogue at his private school, to purchase a penny stamp for his Sunday letter from the stupefied autocrat within.

Linklater's white boots were duly filled with soap and water, but Pip was not present at the ceremony. He sought out the victim next evening and invited him to supper—sardines, and condensed milk spread on biscuits—in his study after prayers. An invitation from Pip was something sought after among the Juniors in "Uncle Bill's" house, for Pip, though only fifteen, was regarded as a certainty for his Eleven colours this year, after his electrifying performance on last year's house-match.

Linklater gratefully accepted the invitation, and the two became friends from that day. They possessed opposite qualities. Pip admired Linklater's vivacity and bonhomie, while Linklater was attracted by Pip's solid muscle and undemonstrative ability to "do things." But cricket was their common bond. Linklater was almost as promising a bat as Pip was a bowler, and the two rose to eminence side by side. But despite their early proficiency, it was fated that neither should be Captain of the Eleven,—Pip for reasons already stated, and Linklater for another, which came about in this way.

Nearly every schoolboy has a bête noire among the masters, and every master has at least one bête noire among the boys. Fortunately it very seldom happens that the antipathy is mutual. If it is, look out for trouble, especially when the boy has a dour temper and the master is fault-finding and finicky. Such an one was Mr. Bradshaw, late Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, and a born fool.

Hostilities began early. On Linklater's first appearance in the Lower Sixth, Mr. Bradshaw remarked unfavourably on the shape of his collar, and elicited loud and sycophantic laughter—which is always music in the ears of men of his type—by several facetious comments on the colour of his tie. Linklater chafed and glowered, and muttered "Swine!" under his breath,—symptoms of discomfiture which only roused Mr. Bradshaw to further humorous efforts. Thereafter the two waged perpetual warfare. Linklater took his opponent's measure with great accuracy, and then advanced to battle. He discovered that Mr. Bradshaw was deaf in his left ear. He therefore made a point, whenever possible, of sitting on that side and making obscene noises. Mr. Bradshaw was extremely bald, and ashamed of the fact. Linklater had noted in his study of the Scriptures that the prophet Elisha had suffered from the same infirmity: consequently Mr. Bradshaw found his blackboard adorned every morning for a month with the single word ELISHA in staring capitals. When Mr. Bradshaw was irritable Linklater was serenely cheerful; when Mr. Bradshaw was blandly sarcastic Linklater was densely stupid; and after ostentatious efforts to understand his preceptor's innuendoes, would shake his head pityingly, with a patient sigh at such ill-timed levity.

So the battle went on. Every schoolboy knows what it must have been like. Matters were bound to come to a crisis. One morning, during a Cicero lesson, the form came upon a Greek expression amid the Latin text, and Mr. Bradshaw, who rather fancied himself at this sort of thing, added a touch of distinction to his translation by rendering the word in French. The form received this flight of scholarship without enthusiasm, merely wondering in their hearts how any man could be such an unmitigated ass as to be desirous of elucidating for them a language of which they knew but little by translating it into another of which they knew still less.

"Yes, élan is exactly the right translation," quoth Mr. Bradshaw, well pleased. "There is always a way out of every difficulty if we only look for it. Get on!"

"Please, sir, what does élan mean, exactly?" inquired Linklater, not because he wished to know, but in the hope that "Braddy" would waste several precious minutes in explaining.

The master rose to the bait.

"Mean? Bless my soul, what a question! Not know? Here, tell him, somebody—Martin, Levesley, Smith, Forbes, next, next, next!"

Various futile translations were offered, and Mr. Bradshaw stormed again.

"Do you fellows do anything in the French hour except eat bananas?" he inquired. (Deferential sniggers.) "What are French lessons but an excuse for idleness? Really, I must ask the Head—"

They let him run on, while the golden moments slipped by. As soon as he showed signs of flagging, Linklater, seeing that it still wanted eight minutes to the hour, repeated—

"But what does it mean, sir?"

"Mean, you insufferable dolt! It means—it means—er, 'energy,' 'verve,' 'dash'—yes, that's it! 'dash'!"

Linklater held up a respectful hand.

"I said 'dash!' sir, the moment the question passed me," he remarked meekly.

The form roared, and unanimously decided afterwards that "Link was one up on Braddy." Mr. Bradshaw, after the manner of his kind, reported Linklater to the Head for "gross impertinence." The Head, who had not reached his present high position for nothing, took a lenient view of the case, merely requesting Linklater to refrain in future from humour during school hours. But for all that Linklater determined to be "even with Braddy" for reporting him: and so successful was he in his enterprise that he effectually destroyed his own last chance of leading a Grandwich Eleven to Lord's.

The schoolboy is an observant animal. Mr. Bradshaw, like most men who carry method and precision to extremes, was a mass of little affectations and mannerisms, one of the most curious of which was his habit of passing his right hand in one comprehensive sweep along his bald head and down over his face. The boys knew this trick by heart: Braddy was much addicted to it at moments of mental exaltation,—say, when standing over a victim and thinking out the details of some exceptionally galling punishment. Milford tertius, the licensed jester of the Lower Fourth, had indeed been caned by the Head for a lifelike imitation of the same, rendered to a delighted pewful of worshippers during a particularly dull sermon in chapel.

The schoolboy, as we have said, is an observant animal. Very well, then.

One morning Mr. Bradshaw, as he entered his classroom, majestic in cap and gown, closing the door carefully and lovingly behind him, with all the cheerful deliberation of a Chief Tormentor who proposes to spend a merry morning in the torture-chamber, suddenly beheld Linklater stand up in his place and heave a "Liddell & Scott" (medium size) across the room at an unsuspecting youth in spectacles, who was busily engaged in putting the finishing touches to a copy of Greek Iambics.

The book, having reached its destination, rebounded in obedience to one of the primary laws of mechanics, and fell with a heavy thud upon the floor. The form, after the first startled flutter, settled down with a happy sigh to witness the rare spectacle of a volcano in full eruption.

Mr. Bradshaw's eye sparkled. Assuredly the enemy was delivered into his hand this time. Mounting his rostrum, he stood gazing, almost affectionately, upon the perpetrator of the outrage, mentally passing in review all the possibilities of punishment, from expulsion downwards, and busily caressing his countenance the while.

Presently some one in the form tittered. Then another, and another, and another. Then the whole room broke into a roar. Mr. Bradshaw, in high good-humour, allowed them to continue for some time: he wanted to rub it into Linklater. At last he cleared his throat.

"Your friends may well smile, sir," he began majestically. (Cheers and laughter.) "So serene are you in your conceit and self-assurance that you proceed to break rules, to behave like a board-school boy, without even taking the trouble to observe if one in Authority"—he smacked his lips—"be present or no. What is the result? Pride has a fall, my young friend. You make a spectacle of yourself—"

Here the speaker was interrupted by a perfect tornado of merriment. A master can always raise a snigger at the expense of a boy, but such whole-hearted appreciation as this had not fallen to Mr. Bradshaw's lot before.

"—a ludicrous exhibition," he continued, after the noise had subsided.

Cheers and laughter, as before.

"If you could only see yourself now, my boy, only behold the spectacle you present—"

This time his audience became so hysterical that Braddy was conscious of an uneasy suspicion that something must be wrong. Suddenly his eye fell upon the pad of foolscap before him, upon which he had been emphasising his remarks by vigorous slappings. The paper was covered with numerous impressions of his hand, neatly outlined in some jet-black substance. After a hasty inspection of the hand itself the awful truth began to dawn upon him, and the now frenzied Lower Sixth were regaled with the spectacle of a man attempting to scrutinise his own countenance by squinting along his nose.

It must have been about this time, according to the best authorities, that the Head came in. That benevolent despot, passing the door on his way to his study, had been attracted by the sounds of mirth within; and under the impression that owing to some misunderstanding Mr. Bradshaw was not taking his form that hour, he entered the room to maintain discipline until the errant master could be found. After his usual punctilious knock—he was a head master of the velvet glove type—he opened the door, and stood an interested and astonished spectator of the scene within.

What he saw was this—

On the benches rolled thirty boys, helpless, speechless, tearful with laughter; and upon the rostrum, with a parti-coloured bald head and a coal-black face, there mowed and gibbered a creature, which rolled frenzied eyes and gnashed unnaturally whitened teeth in impotent frenzy upon the convulsed throng before him.

Linklater had covered the door-handle with lampblack, and Mr. Bradshaw's favourite mannerism had done the rest.