A faint giggle at Bags’s repartee went round the class, like the sound of a breaking ripple. This penetrated into Mr. Dutton’s consciousness, and, shifting his attitude a little without looking up, he leaned his forehead on his open hand, so that he could observe the boys through the chinks of his fingers. David, of course, was far too old a hand to be caught by this paltry subterfuge, for “playing chinks” was a manœuvre of the enemy which had got quite stale through repetition, and he therefore gently laid down on the sloping top of his locker the dart which he had just dipped again in his inkpot to throw back at Bags, and with an industrious air turned to his letter again.
The twenty minutes allotted on Sunday afternoon school for writing home to parents was already more than half spent, but the date which he had copied off his neighbour and “My dear Papa” was as far as the first fine careless rapture of composition had carried him. It was really difficult to know what to say to his dear papa, for all the events of the past week were completely thrown into shadow by the one sunlit fact that he had got his school-colours for cricket, and had made twenty-four runs in the last match. But, as he knew perfectly well, his father cared as little for cricket as he did for football; indeed, David ironically doubted if he knew the difference between them, and that deplorable fact restricted the zone of interests common to them. And really the only other event of true importance was that his aunt had sent him a postal order for five shillings. It would not be politic to tell his father about that, in case of inquiries being made as to what he had done with it, when he got home in a fortnight’s time for the summer holidays.
He would have eaten it all long before then, for it was strawberry-time. David bit heavily into his wooden pen-holder in his efforts to think of something innocuous to say, and found his mouth full of fragments of chewed wood. These he proceeded to masticate rather ostentatiously while he still sucked his inky lip, the joy of this being that old Dubs was still playing chinks, and would certainly, as a surprise, ask him before long what he was eating. This was stimulating to the mind, and he plunged into his letter.
“We are being taken in the museum, because they are building a new first-form class-room. There was dry-rot, too, in the wainscotting of the old one. We have been doing Cicero this week, as well as Virgil, and Xenophon in Greek, and Medea, and Holland in geography and James 2. I have got to division of decimals which is very interesting, and square-root which is most difficult, because some have it and others don’t——”
David gave one fleeting blue-eyed glance at Mr. Dutton, and saw that the blessed moment was approaching. The chink had widened, and there was no doubt whatever that it was he who was being observed. Then he bent his yellow head over his letter again, and chewed the fragments of pen-holder with renewed vigour.
“It was very hot all this week, and I and two other chaps were taken to bathe at the Richmond bathing-place day before yesterday by——”
“Blaize, what are you eating?” said Mr. Dutton suddenly.
David looked up in bland and innocent surprise.
“Eating, sir?” he asked. “My pen-holder, sir.”
A slight titter went round the class, for David had the enviable reputation of “drawing” his pastors and masters (always excepting Head) by the geniality and unexpectedness of his replies. But on this occasion the blandness was a little overdone, and instead of “taking a back seat” Mr. Dutton put down his yellow novel on his desk, back upwards, and came across the room to where David was sitting. The dart, with its wet, inky point lay there, and it was too late to draw his blotting-paper over it. But a more dramatic dénouement than the mere discovery of an inky dart, which might be assessed at fifty lines—or perhaps a hundred, since it was Sunday—hung in the air.