The Doctor smiled.
“A natural question, Corkey, and I think no worse of you for having asked it. The magnitude of the sum may reasonably puzzle a lad who as yet cannot appreciate the value of money. This, however, is no time to enter upon the complicated question of supply and demand. It will be sufficient for you to know that the Managers of the Apollo Fire Office are in reasonable hopes of getting their money’s worth—to speak colloquially. For my part, when I think upon your ten years of steady work at Merivale, I have no hesitation in saying the salary is not extravagant. Let it be your part to administer it with prudence and swiftly to convince those set in authority over you that you are worth more than that annual sum rather than less.”
I cleared out and told the chaps, and they were all fearfully interested, especially Morgan, because when I left Morgan would become the head of the school. He turned a sort of dirty-drab green when he heard that I was going; and first I thought it was sorrow for me, and then I found it was funk for himself. He didn’t care a button about losing me; but he felt that to be lifted up all of a sudden to the top was almost too much.
“I feel like the Pope felt when he found he was going to be elected,” he said. “Only it’s far worse for me than him, because he needn’t have entered the competition for Pope, I suppose, if he didn’t want; but, in my case, the thing is a sort of law of nature, and I’ve got to be head boy.”
“There are the advantages,” I said. But he could only see the responsibilities. He wasn’t pretending: he really hated the idea—for the moment.
I told my chum, Frost, too; and I told him that I’d asked the Doctor whether I was worth fifty pounds a year to anybody.
“If he’d been straight,” said Frost, “he’d have told you that you’ve been worth fifty pounds a year to him, anyway—for countless years; because you came here almost as soon as you were born, and your brothers, too.”
It was a great upheaval, like things always seem to be when they happen, however much you expect them. Of course I knew I had to go sometime, and was thankful to think so, and full of ambitions for grown-up life; but now that the moment had actually come, I wasn’t particularly keen about it. Especially as I should miss the fireworks and lose the various prizes I was a snip for, if I’d stopped till Christmas. I rather wished my Aunt Augusta hadn’t been so busy, and had left my career alone, at any rate until after the Christmas holidays.
Of course my going was a godsend to various other chaps and, though they regretted it in a way, especially the footer eleven, such a lot of things were always happening from day to day at Merivale that there was no time really to mourn. One or two wanted to club up and give me a present, but it didn’t come to reality; though of course they were frightfully sorry I was going, when they had time to think about it. They were, naturally, very keen over the various things that I left behind; but of course these were all handed over to my brothers.
Then the rather solemn moment came when a cab arrived for me and I went. But everybody was in class at the time and nobody missed me. In fact, it wasn’t what you might call really solemn to anybody but myself.