“D’you want some more, Jarnley?” came the quick reply. “As it is I’ve a great mind to have you up before the prefects’ council for bullying a new boy.”
“Prefects’ council,” repeated Jarnley with a sneer. “That’s just it. If you weren’t a prefect, Haviland, I’d fight you. And you know it.”
“But I don’t know it and I don’t think it,” was the reply. The while, something of a smothered hoot was audible among the now rapidly increasing group, for Haviland, for reasons which will hereinafter appear, was not exactly a popular prefect. It subsided however, as by magic, when he darted a glance into the quarter whence it arose.
“Come here—you,” he said, beckoning the cause of all the disturbance. “What’s your name?”
“Mpukuza.”
“What?”
The African boy repeated it unhesitatingly, willingly. He was quick to recognise the difference between constituted authority and the spurious and usurped article—besides, here was one who had intervened to turn the tables on his oppressor.
“Rum name that!” said his new questioner, eyeing him with some curiosity, at the full-throated native vowels. “Haven’t you got any other?”
“Other? Oh, yes, Anthony. Missionary name me Anthony.”
“Anthony? Well, that’s better. We can get our tongues round that. What are you, eh? Where d’you come from, I mean?”