“Thanks; that’s jolly good of you,” said David. “And you do write awfully like me. I wonder why. You used not to, as when Maddox spotted my handwriting in that crib.”
“Oh, I suppose it’s being with you and all that,” said Bags vaguely, knowing quite well that he had long tried to write like David, out of affection and admiration for all that pertained to his pal. “I’ll begin at line a hundred, shall I, so that when you get there you can skip the next hundred and go on at line two hundred?”
“Yes, that’s the trick,” said David. “Thanks awfully. Sure it doesn’t bore you? I say, shall I lash a couple more pens for you?”
“Don’t think I should get on well with them,” said Bags.
The Lent term, about half of which was now over, seemed to David a very poor affair in comparison with other terms. Rugby football was finished with; cricket, of course, did not exist; the weather had been consistently diluvian, so that the golf-links where he had intended to pass most of his leisure, were generally half flooded. Other fellows, it is true, were busy on athletics, but David, seeing through Frank’s eyes, had no sympathy with just running when there was no ulterior object except to run quicker than anybody else. In fact, there were no games except fives and racquets, and, the demand for courts being largely in excess of the supply, he could not get one as often as his energy needed. Thus, since there was so little that might legitimately be done, he had chiefly occupied himself in breaking school-rules, and, as Bags had said, he had really passed most of the half in writing lines, which, though it took time, merely bottled up instead of relieving him of his exuberant vitality. Furthermore, since there was not the slightest chance of his getting out of the middle fifth at Easter (only geniuses, of whom he was certainly not one, did that) David had argued that the less time he spent over work the better.
The worst of it was there was so very little to do, and Maddox had jawed David on this subject of “playing the goat” before, suggesting that the devil had entered into him. It was not quite that really: it was only the rampageous energy of David’s youth seeking an outlet. He was growing enormously, and, as sometimes happened, this process did not make him languid and slack, but seemed only to increase the vitality that stirred and bubbled in him as in some long-legged colt, making him throw up his limbs and scamper simply because he was vigorous and growing. But his escapades and general obstreperousness somewhat exercised his friend as well as his house-master, who at the present moment, while David and Bags were writing lines together, was talking to the prefect about the house in general, and the affairs of David in particular. His general line, as has been said, was to let the senior boys run the house, while he enjoyed the tranquillity that their management brought him. But David’s persistent adventures had protruded themselves into his notice, and a consultation with Maddox seemed to him desirable.
“About David,” he said. “It’s only energy, Frank, and not viciousness. You gave just the same sort of trouble yourself, when you were his age.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Maddox. “But I don’t believe I was ever quite such a nuisance as David is. If ever there’s a crash in the house, it’s always David breaking a window or throwing his boots at somebody.”
“Can’t you do anything with him?” asked Adams. “He’ll listen to you when he won’t attend to a word I say.”
“Oh, he listens to me all right,” said Maddox; “but then, he forgets. Besides, he’s so awfully funny: he makes me laugh.”