“I don’t know, mind, but perhaps I can guess,” said the other, enigmatically. “But look here, Williams. Supposing we put in a word for him to Nick. Get him to take off the fellow’s gates, at any rate? Eh? Clay would join, and so would Jackson, in fact we all would.”
“That’d make it worse. Nick would think we were all in league against him. He isn’t going back one jot or tittle on his infallible judgment, so don’t you believe it. We’d get properly snubbed for our pains.”
“Well, I’m going to tackle him, anyhow. I’m not afraid of Nick for all his absurd pomposity,” rejoined Mr Sefton, with something like a snort of defiance, and his nose in the air. He meant it, too. Yet, although the above expression of opinion between these two masters very fairly represented the general estimate in which the whole body held the Head, they were fully alive to the latter’s good points, and supported him loyally in upholding the discipline and traditions of the school.
Chapter Eleven.
A Midnight Foray.
There was one in whose eyes Haviland, fallen from his pedestal, was on a still higher plane even than he had been before; and that one was Mpukuza, otherwise Anthony, sneeringly known among the ill-disposed as “Haviland’s chum.” With the entire and unswerving loyalty of his race towards the object of its hero-worship, the Zulu boy looked upon his god’s misfortune as his own misfortune, and was not slow to proclaim the fact in season and out of season. Any fellow within measurable dimensions of his own size who professed satisfaction within Cetchy’s hearing had got to fight, while more than one thrashing came his way from bigger fellows, towards whom his championing of his hero’s cause took, perforce, the form of cheek. As for the prime author of the said misfortune, it would have been astonishing to note the result upon the reverend but stern Doctor’s mind, could he either have heard or understood the awful threats and imprecations muttered at him in the liquid Zulu language whenever he came within view of Anthony.
The latter, since he had been at Saint Kirwin’s, had made his way very fairly well. Acting upon an earnest and wise warning from the missionary who had placed him there, the masters had refrained from taking undue notice of him, and so spoiling him, as perhaps might otherwise have been the case, and being thus left to make his own way, he had made it, as we have said. And he was growing taller and stronger, with all the fine physique of his race. Lithe, active, enduring, he was as hard as steel; nor would it be very long before he might be in a condition to turn the tables on Jarnley and Co., quite independently of his hero and protector.
To whom one day he sidled up, and opened conversation this way: