The Human Boy and the War

by Eden Phillpotts

My father, of course, understood these high branches of his profession, and once even went so far as to be interested in a loan for a South American Republic; but before the thing was matured, one side of the Republic was destroyed by a volcano and the other side by insurgents, who shot the President and all his best friends; and these events so shook investors in general that they would not subscribe to that loan, though the Republic, in its financial extremities, offered fabulous rates of interest.

I mention my father at such great length just to show the man he was and to explain my own bent of mind, which lay in the same direction. He said once, in a genial mood, that no man had ever made more bricks without straw than he had. It seemed to me a very dignified and original profession, because you are on your own, so to say, and you go out into the world single-handed, and by simple force of a brilliant imagination and hard work, win to yourself an honourable position. You may even get knighted or baroneted, if your financial genius is crowned with sufficient success to give away a few tons of money to a hospital, or the "party chest," whatever that is.

So, understanding all these things fairly well, it was natural that I took the line I did in the affair of Protheroe minimus and young Mayne. And, whatever the Doctor thought, my father didn't see any objection to the operation; and, of course, his opinion was the only one I cared about.

It was like this.

Young Mayne, though very poor, had a most amazing knack of prize-winning. He was in a class where all the chaps were a year older than him, and yet he always beat them with the greatest ease. He was good all round, and thought nothing of raking in prizes term after term.

In fact, it seemed a thousand pities, seeing that he was very poor and the only son of a lawyer's clerk, that his great prize-winning powers were not yielding a better return. For, not to put too fine a point upon it, as they say, the prizes at Merivale were piffle of the deepest dye, and of no money value worth mentioning. Dr. Dunston went on getting the same books term after term, and simply unreadable slush was all you could call them.

The few things that were good were all back numbers, like "Robinson Crusoe"--all right in themselves, but nobody wants to read them twice; and then there were school stories that would have made angels weep, especially one called "St. Winifred's," in which boys behaved like girls and blushed if anybody said something dashing. Then there were books about birds and animals and insects, and for the Lower School the Doctor used to sink to "Peter Parley" and the "Peep of Day," and such-like absolute mess of a bygone age.

These things were all bound in blue leather and had a gold owl stamped upon them, which was the badge of Merivale.

I believe the owl was supposed to be the bird of Athena, and stood for wisdom, or some such rot. Anyhow, it wasn't a bad idea in its way, for a more owlish sort of school than Merivale I never was at.

And young Mayne got more of these books than anybody; but to him they were as grass, and he thought nothing of them. Whereas Protheroe minimus had never won a prize in his life, and wanted one fearfully--not for itself, but for the valuable effect it would have on his mother.