The Human Boy and the War

by Eden Phillpotts

Of course, you don't get book prizes for cricket, or footer, or running, which--especially the latter--were the only things that Protheroe min. could have hoped honestly to get a prize for. But I stuck to the problem, and had a very happy idea three nights before the end of the term. I then advised Protheroe to say the prize was for "calisthenics."

There are no prizes for calisthenics at Merivale; but it sounded rather a likely subject, especially as he was a dab at it. And, anyway, he thought it would satisfy his mother and be all right.

So that was settled, and it only remained for Mayne to get his lawful prizes and hand over the least important to Protheroe min.

It all went exceedingly well--at the start--and young Mayne got the prizes and gave Protheroe the second, which was for literature.

The thing was composed entirely of poems--Longfellow, or Southey, or some such blighter--and Protheroe said that his mother would fairly revel to think that he had won it. He packed it in his box after "breaking up," and we exchanged our agreements; and it came out, when all was over, that young Mayne was to have two pounds out of Protheroe's five, and I was to have ten bob from Mayne and a pound from Protheroe--thirty shillings in all; and Protheroe would have the prize and two pounds, not to mention other pickings, which would doubtless be given to him by his proud and grateful mother.

You might have thought that nothing could go wrong with a sound financial scheme of that sort. I put any amount of time and thought into the transaction, and as it was my first introduction into the world of business, so to speak, and I stood to net a clear thirty shillings, naturally I left no stone unturned, as they say, to make it a brilliant and successful affair.

And yet it all went to utter and hopeless smash, though it was no fault of mine.

And you certainly couldn't blame Protheroe min. or Mayne either. In fact, Protheroe must have carried it off very well when he got home, and the calisthenics went down all right; and Mayne, when his people asked how it was that he hadn't got more than one prize, was ingenious enough to say that he'd suffered from hay fever all the term and been too off colour to make his usual haul.

So everything would have been perfection but for the idiotic and footling behaviour of Protheroe min.'s mother.

This excitable and weak-minded woman was not content with just quietly taking the prize and putting it in a glass case with the prizes won in the past by Protheroe's brothers. She must go fluttering about telling his wretched relations what he'd done; and, as if that was not enough, she got altogether above herself and wrote to Dr. Dunston about it. She said how glad and happy it had made her, and that success in the gymnasium was something to begin with, and that she hoped and prayed that it would lead to better things, and that they would live to be proud of Protheroe minimus yet, and such-like truck!