“Lord no, but I was just washing up and taking an easy. Bags is going on.”
“Well, I said I would pass on Adams’s message. Of course you can be swished if you like: nothing easier. But the Head makes you feel a bit cheap first, and afterwards lays on.”
David sighed heavily.
“I suppose I ought to promise you to be an absolute record for saintliness,” he said, “but it’s no use. Something goes ‘fizz’ inside me, and I can’t help playing the fool. I wish I was older or younger. If I was older I suppose I should see what a rotter I am, and if I was younger I should simply do what you told me. I know you’re right, but then comes a minute and I can’t help doing something foolish on any account, if you know what I mean.”
David looked round the study again, and it made him feel rather melancholy. He hadn’t seen much of Frank this term, for Frank had been working hard, and again the sense of the distance they were apart in the world of school severed them. It was greater now that he was an independent person in the fifth than it had been when he was Frank’s fag, and in Remove A. And the intimacy which had been theirs at Naseby was no longer possible at school. At that moment, also, a tooth began suddenly to ache and gave him a series of staccato stabs with a really brilliant touch.
“Gosh, and I’ve got the toothache,” he said. “It’s suddenly begun hurting like hell.”
“Sorry,” said Frank.
David leaned back in his chair, with his long arms and legs sprawling.
“It ached yesterday,” he said, “but then I didn’t mind as I was having a good time over the seal. But it’s rot having toothache when other things are beastly. Why should this blighter decay? My other teeth don’t. What a rotten show it all is!”
“What’s up, David?” asked Frank.