This was in the Midlands, and the word when spelt “rank” is Shakespearean. In Cheshire the positive “ronk” is not used, but the comparative or superlative is “gallus,” which in French is pendard. But “ronk” is a low mark for character, and when a country school board presented as candidates for pupil-teachership three boys so ronk that their last examination had been in the Police Court on a charge of arson, I thought that the bounds of charitable construction had been passed. Certainly their “offence was rank.” Nor did I think the clerk’s plea, that “there was nothing else you could put ’em to,” a sufficient excuse. I would not dwell on the proved fact that they could neither spell nor do a sum.
Choir-boys have an established reputation for ronkness. I was told of an example in my district of that date. A number of them had been out for a Saturday afternoon expedition into the country: returning on foot they found themselves dead beat, some way from home, and they had no money for rail or tram fares. The leader on the Decani side—he who sings up to A, and dies of consumption, young, with soft music—solved the difficulty. He went to the nearest house and rang the door-bell. Full of fictitious strength they ran for a hundred yards. Another ring, and another run, and so on da capo al fine.
I wonder whether he was a ronk boy who discomfited the butcher. It is often charged against our schools that they do not give a practical education, equipping a boy to fight the battle of life. But the lamb of my flock, of whom I am thinking, was a remarkable proof to the contrary.
The butcher had advertised in Monday’s paper for “A Smart Lad.” That same morning a candidate applied.
“What name? Age? Been to the Board School? Passed your Standards? What’s four eights? Ah, and seven eights? Fifty-six? Good: seem a smart lad. Got a character? At home? How long to get it? Twenty minutes? Run and get it, and if it’s all right, I’ll put you on in the morning.”
Thus the butcher. In ten minutes the smart lad returned.
“Got back already? You are a smart lad. Thought you said it would take twenty minutes, and you’re back in ten.”
The smart lad grinned. “It ’ud take me twenty minutes to get my character, but I got yours in ten, and I ain’t coming. G’Mornin’.”
These veritable histories, I see, on looking back, are almost wholly concerned with boys and infants: where are the girls? It was constantly impressed upon me by ladies interested in schools, that I, as a mere man, was wholly unfit to be entrusted with the inspection of girls’ and infants’ schools. It was even thrown in my teeth that I, being a miserable old bachelor, could know nothing about children of any kind. This was the argument of Constance (King John, Act III. sc. iv.) to the Cardinal:
“He talks to me that never had a son.”[25]