The Human Boy and the War

by Eden Phillpotts

But he was far past a thing like that. His eyes had glittered in rather a wild way for three days now, and he said the Tommy with the black moustache was always looking reproachfully at him, and if he shut his eyes he saw him more distinctly than ever. In fact, he was getting larger and more threatening every minute. He said:

"A mere flogging is nothing to what they endure in the trenches."

It was a sporting idea, and I would have risked it and gone with him; in fact, I offered, being his great chum, but he would not allow me.

"No," he said, "nothing is gained by your coming. This is entirely my affair. Besides, you wouldn't tempt people to subscribe."

So he went, and escaped in the darkness, and I waited at the limit of "bounds" with great anxiety to meet him when he came back. My last word to him was not to sing his bit out of an anthem, but something comic about the War. But he didn't know anything comic about the War, and he said, even if he did, that such a thing would only amuse common people, who could not be supposed to give more than halfpence, if they gave anything at all; whereas a solo from a fine anthem would attract a better class, who understood more about music, and were more religious, and consequently had more money.

So he went, and in about twenty minutes, to my great horror, I saw him being brought back in the custody of Brown--our well known master!

The hateful Brown always loves to score off anybody not in his own class, and so, seeing Percy warbling out of bounds in the middle of Merivale, and about ten people, mostly kids, listening to him, he pounced on the wretched Percy and dragged him away. He'd been singing about ten minutes when the blow fell, and he was fearfully upset about it, because everything had been going jolly well, and he had already made no less than sevenpence in coppers, all from oldish women. He had been told to go away from in front of a butcher's shop, but nobody else had interfered with him in the least, and he had sung the anthem solo through twice, and was just off again when the brutal Brown came along and saw the Merivale colours on his cap, recognized Percy minimus, and very nearly had a fit.

So there it was; and he got flogged, and Dr. Dunston said it showed low tastes, and would have been a source of great sorrow to his father. And he also said that to explode a sacred air in that way in hope of touching the charitable to fill his own pocket was about the limit, and a great disgrace to the school in general. All of which went off Percy like water off a duck's back, and the flogging didn't seem to hurt him either.

And there were four days still, and he said his Tommy grew larger and larger, until he was almost as big as a house. In fact, Percy minimus was rapidly growing dotty, and, as his great friend, I felt I must do something, or he would very likely get some other dangerous illness, or have a fit, or lose his mind for ever and become a maniac in real earnest. So I told Percy minor; but unfortunately he and my Percy had quarrelled rather bitterly for the moment, and Percy minor said he didn't care what happened to Percy minimus; and that if he went out of his mind he wouldn't have far to go; while, as to Percy major, I couldn't tell him, because he had left Merivale the term before.

The matron now discovered that Percy was queer, for she'd been making him take pills for two days, and then one night, hearing him sigh fearfully after he was in bed, she tried his temperature, and found it about three hundred degrees of warmth. So she lugged him off to the sick room, and Dr. Weston came in his motor, and said he couldn't see any reason for it, and gave Percy some muck to calm him down.