Magnus chafed at all this stuff; growled over it, almost resisted; and yet it was wise to pass things by as quietly as he could. All the same, his feeling towards some of the upper classmen was getting to be a very fixed fact, indeed.
Mr. Prank, for instance, was much given to hops,—also to prinking for the same: and it was in his heart to combine all the good things he could, and "crawling" plebs came in among the rest. So on hop nights, after supper, when Mr. Prank was shaving, dressing, and vainly endeavouring to curl his short hair, Magnus Kindred was frequently detailed as valet. The work being to follow Mr. Prank about the tent and fan him during these fatigues, and also to soothe and attune his feelings by singing "Annie Laurie" or some other lovelorn ditty. How Magnus did hate it!—and how he did secretly vow vengeance, if ever he himself should have half a chance with Mr. Prank's best girl! But then! Mr. Prank had a relay of "best girls," and could spare one or two just as well as not.
On the other hand, the two men who "tented" with Magnus thought he had an easy time.
"If you had to black Mr. Mean's shoes!" said Randolph.
"Or clear up after old Seaton," said Rig.
Rig's technical name taxed all his powers of memory and patience. It began:
"I am the distilled quintessence of stuff, the double-dyed result of being dipped in the Styx,"—and so on, ad infinitum, and to Rig, certainly, ad nauseam.
Homesickness had broken loose in the fourth class, of late, and become epidemic. These boys were but boys, and the manliest of them all would—many a day—have given up his hopes of being a brigadier just to lay his head down on his mother's apron, and have her pet him and comfort him, and make him feel that he was not a "beast."
"But she'd not find any hair to stroke, now," said Magnus Kindred, in one of these spasms. And then he caught hold of himself again, set his teeth in his favourite fashion, and announced to himself that he meant to be adjutant.
"And I'll not look like you, either," he went on, apostrophising Mr. Larkin, who just then came strolling by between two admiring girls, turning from one to the other with much the air of the exquisite who said: