"There's a better reason than that," he said. "I may turn Stopford from his beastliness yet. Once or twice I've staggered him a bit with telling him what will come of his cruelty to me."
That was the first time I seemed to see a screw loose in Richmond minimus; but he didn't absolutely preach right bang out until we'd had a missionary at the chapel one Sunday.
Our chapel was also the big school-room, and at one end were panels of wood on week-days which very cunningly opened and turned into the Ten Commandments on Sundays. On each side was a door, and one was the Doctor's private entrance into the chapel, and the other was a deep cupboard wherein were kept blackboards, large maps and other things. In this chapel the missionary, who was an old pupil of Dr. Dunstan's, preached to us about the heathen of some rather good-sounding place; and Richmond minimus was so excited that he gave all his pocket-money and borrowed two-pence of Williamson. In this manner he subscribed in all fivepence; and if he could have borrowed more he would have given more. From that day he decided to be a missionary at least, if not a martyr.
The missionary was certainly a good preacher, besides having seen lions wild. It shows the difference between chaps that the lion part interested me most and the heathen part bored me, while Richmond minimus simply hated the lions, but the heathen part seemed to act on him like ginger-beer and excite him to a fearful pitch.
Three days afterwards the fit burst out in Richmond minimus. I came into the big school-room one night, ten minutes before the tea-bell, and there he was preaching to about eight chaps, chiefly kids! But Mayne and Morant were also there listening, Mayne being high in the sixth. Words seemed to flow out of Richmond as easily as they flow out of a master! He was talking about pocket-money.
"What is it but round bits of silver and copper?" he said. "Yet, my dear friends, there is a great power in it, and we should not spend it all on self. There are thousands of people who never have pocket-money, but they deserve it quite as much as us; perhaps more. Suppose you have threepence a week, which I have myself. Will it hurt you to yield up one halfpenny to the charity box? Oh, my friends, it won't! Yet that half-penny, given cheerfully every week through the term, comes out at twelve halfpennies, which is sixpence. Do it gladly and your holidays will be brighter by sixpence well spent than they otherwise would be."
Here the bell rang, and Mayne seemed in doubt whether to smack young Richmond's head or rag him, or merely tell him he wasn't to preach again. However, he did nothing except say to his chum, Morant, that it was queer.
It wasn't what Richmond minimus said, but the way he said it. He was as keen and solemn as if he'd been preaching to a million people in a cathedral. The stuff about his wretched pocket-money might have been the most important thing ever uttered by a bishop, such was the way he said it. You couldn't help listening. It was only afterwards, when you thought about it, that you realized what tommy rot it was. To cast away a half-penny into the charity box weekly was a childish idea, I thought; and Gideon, who understands the ins and outs of pocket-money in a way nobody else does, owing to being the son of a diamond merchant, said that the idea was false political economy; and I said so too.
As to Stopford, the charity box was a painful subject with him ever since the Doctor happened to see him putting something into it. The Doctor had found him subscribing rather often, and knowing the other things that Stopford did, it much surprised him. So he set a trap and had the box empty next time Stopford subscribed; and so at last found out that it was Stopford who put in brace-buttons—a great problem that had puzzled everybody the whole term. And they weren't even his own brace-buttons.
After preaching three times Richmond minimus had the nerve to attack Stopford publicly in a sermon! About twenty chaps were listening to him, and as soon as he uttered the name, Stopford prepared to go and scrag him; but two or three big fellows told him to sit down and not interfere, and Richmond was so strung up and in such a frightfully excited state that he sailed right on and spoke about Stopford in a way that made many chaps bar Stopford for weeks afterwards.