He was learning to play the violin also—not because he liked it, but because of the importance of doing it in moments of terrible difficulty. He said that it soothes the brain and helps it to do its work—but not so much while you're learning. He said that after he had thoroughly mastered a favourite piece of Holmes's he should be satisfied, as there would never be any occasion for him to play more than one piece.
Chaps liked Peters very fairly well. He was a good 'footer' player, and very good at outside right. He was fast, and told me that speed often made all the difference to the success of a criminal case. Pure sprinting had many a time made all the difference to Holmes. Peters didn't know much in the way of learning, but he dearly liked to get hold of a newspaper and read the crimes. He didn't find out about Johnson major's bat, however; but he said it wasn't a fair test, because he never heard clearly all that went before the crime. A few small detections he made with great ease, and found the half-crown that Mathers had lost in the playground. This he did by cross-questioning Mathers, and making him bring back to his mind the smallest details; and then Mathers remembered turning head over heels while only touching the ground with one hand, to show how it could be done. And on the exact spot, in some long grass at the top of the playground where he had performed this feat, there was the half-crown. Mathers offered Peters sixpence on the spot, but Peters said it was nothing, and wouldn't take any reward.
He generally knew by the mud on your boots which of the walks you had been, and he always could tell which of the masters was taking 'prep' before he went into the room, by the sounds or silence. He also had a very curious way of prophesying by certain signs if the Doctor was in a good temper or a bad one. He always knew this long before anybody else, and it was a very useful thing to know, naturally.
But Peters did not really do much till his own guinea-pig was found dead in its lair about half-way through his second term at Merivale. He did not care for animals in a general way, excepting as helping to throw light on crime; which, it seems, they are very much in the habit of doing, though not intentionally. But this particular guinea-pig was far from a common creature, being a prize Angora pig, and having been given to Peters during the Christmas holidays by a friend of his dead father. It had long hair, and looked far more like one of those whacking chrysanthemums you see than a guinea-pig. It was brown and yellow, and had a round nose like a rabbit, and seemed so trusting and friendly that everybody liked it. One other boy—namely, James—had a guinea-pig also, because these were the days before we took to keeping lizards and other things in our desks—which was discovered by a dormouse of mine coming up through the inkpot hole in my desk under the Doctor's nose, and so giving itself away. And though the pig of James was a good white pig, with a black patch on his right side and one little dab of yellow fur where his tail would have been if he had had one, yet, compared to the guinea-pig of Peters, he was nothing. James, however, didn't mind the loss of admiration for his pig, and he offered Peters to let the pigs live together, which would be better for both of them, because a guinea-pig is the most sociable thing in Nature, and are known well to pine, and even die, if kept in single captivity. But Peters had a secret fear that the pig of James was not sound in its health. He told me that he had made a most searching examination of James's pig, and discovered a spot of pink skin on its chest. He said it might be nothing, but, on the other hand, it might be some infectious disease. Also James's pig was inclined to go bald; so he thanked James very much, and said he thought that if the pigs saw each other through the bars from time to time it would be all they wanted to brace them up and cheer them. But he thought, upon the whole, they had better not meet.
James didn't like this. He was rather a rum chap in many ways, but very good at English grammar and chemistry; and he had invented a way of cribbing, while a master was actually in the room, that many copied afterwards. James got rather rude about the guinea-pig of Peters, and seemed to think in some way that it was the pig, and not Peters, that had decided not to live with his pig.
He said one day, when looking at the champion pig, "I suppose the little beast thinks it's too big a swell to live with my honest, short-haired pig. All the same, if they had a fight, I know which would jolly well win."
"So do I," said Peters. "If a race-horse had a fight with a cart-horse, the cart-horse would win. This is not a prize-fighting pig."
West was there and said the same. He, of course, understood all about prize-fighting, owing to his brother being winner of the 'middle-weights' at the championship of the army; and he said that if these pigs fought, the superior weight of James's pig behind the shoulder would soon settle it. Besides, of course, the other one's hair streamed all over it like a skye terrier's. You could see at a glance that it was never born to be a fighter.
"However, if you want a fight," said Peters, who was always cool and polite, owing to copying Sherlock Holmes, "if you want a fight, James, I can oblige you."
They were both fourteen-and-a-half, and James was a lot fatter, but not so tall as Peters.