"Thursday is half-term," says Mr. Wriford. "Do you think the boys might have a holiday? They've been working very well."
"A whole holiday?" says Mr. Pennyquick doubtfully.
Mr. Wriford knows perfectly well the reason for the dubiety in the Headmaster's voice. In these days he has taken the work of the school entirely out of Mr. Pennyquick's hands. Mr. Pennyquick no longer so much as reads roll-call and prayers. Abbot calls the roll and is mighty proud of the duty; Mr. Wriford takes prayers. Mr. Pennyquick perhaps twice in a week will tear himself from his sofa and his medicines and suddenly burst upon the schoolroom, patrol a few turns with loud and quite unnecessary "WORK UP'S!" and as suddenly discharge himself again to his study.
The less frequently he appears, the more he shirks any scholastic duties with the neglect they entail of nursing his distressing ailments in the seclusion of his study. Thus it is the idea of having the boys on his hands for a complete day that gives this doubt to his tone when a whole holiday is projected, and Mr. Wriford, well aware of it, quickly reassures him on the point.
"Well, I think they deserve a whole holiday," says Mr. Wriford. "Of course I'd come up just the same and look after—"
"My dear fellow, a whole holiday by all means," Mr. Pennyquick breaks in. "By all means. Splendid! They deserve it. You're doing wonderfully with them, my dear fellow. My mother reports she has never known them so happy or so well-behaved. No ragging in the dormitories at night. Cold baths every morning at their own request. Good God, do you know I'm so much a cold bath man myself that I take one twice a day—twice a day winter and summer—when I'm fit. Clean and smart and quiet at meals. Perfect silence in the schoolroom. Keen, manly play in the field. Devoted to you. My dear fellow, you're wonderful. Whole holiday? Whole holiday by all means. I was going to suggest it myself."
"Thursday, then," says Mr. Wriford. "They'll be delighted. I thought of playing cricket in the morning and then, if you agree, asking Mrs. Pennyquick if she could fix us up some lunch and tea things in hampers, and we'd go and picnic all the rest of the day at Penrington woods and bathe in the river and that kind of thing."
The Headmaster thinks it splendid. "Splendid, my dear fellow. Splendid. Certainly. I'll see to it myself. Cricket! Bathing! Good God, you'll think it very weak of me, but I feel devilish near crying when I think of a jolly day like that and me tied up here and unable to share it. Cricket! Good God, why, when I was at Oxford I made nine consecutive centuries for my college one year. It's a fact. Nine absolutely—or was it ten? I must look it up. I believe it was ten. Bathing! My dear fellow, a few years ago I thought nothing of a couple of miles swim before breakfast—side-stroke, breast-stroke, back-stroke; good God, I was an eel in the water, a living eel. I'm an outdoor man, absolutely. Always have been. That's the cruelty of it. Hullo, there's the bell. I shall take prayers this morning, Wriford. I'm coming in all day for a real good day's work with the dear fellows. I don't know what the doctor will say, but I'm going to do it."
Mr. Wriford is at the door, and the Outdoor Man already stretching down an arm to feel beneath the sofa. "Perhaps not prayers," says the Outdoor Man. "You'd better not wait for me for prayers. I've just my loathsome medicine to take. Take prayers for me for once, like a good fellow, and I'll be with you in two minutes. Splendid. You're wonderful. Two minutes. Damn."
There is the sound of a bottle upset beneath the sofa, and Mr. Wriford hurries off to find Abbot already halfway through the roll, then to take prayers, and then, amidst tremendous applause, to announce a whole holiday for Thursday's half-term.