Thwaites spent his guinea almost entirely on tuck, and though he was very generous with it, and shared the grub with the competitors Rice and Sutherland minor, who were his friends, he still kept enough to make himself ill again. For it was one of the unlucky things about Thwaites that any muck really worth eating always bowled him over. He wrote a poem three times as long as his War poem, called "Effect of Cocoanut Rock on the Tummy of Thwaites"; but Dunston wouldn't have purred much over that.
THE REVENGE
If anybody has done a crime, Dr. Dunston generally speaks to them before the school, so that all may hear what the crime is. And according to the way he speaks to them, we know the sort of fate in store.
If he says he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, there is great hope, for, as Mitchell pointed out, that means the Doctor has himself committed the crime in far-off times when he was young; but if he doesn't say he remembers what it was to be a boy himself, then the crime is probably a crime he never committed; and these are the sort he punishes worst.
Well, in the case of Tudor, he had never committed Tudor's crime, and he himself said, when ragging Tudor before punishment, that he had never even heard of such a crime. Therefore the consequences were bad for Tudor, and he was flogged and his greatest treasure taken away from him for ever.
It was, no doubt, a very peculiar crime, and Mitchell told Tudor that it was not so much the crime itself as the destructive consequences, that had put the Doctor into such a bate. But we found out next term that the destructive consequences had been sent home in a bill for Tudor's father to pay, and they amounted to two pounds, so Tudor caught it at home also.
Well, it was like this: Tudor came back for the spring term with a remarkably interesting tool called a glazier's diamond. He had saved up and bought it with his own money, and it was valuable, having in it a real diamond, the beauty of which was that it could cut glass. It could also mark glass for ever; and, after a good deal of practice, on out-of-the-way panes of glass in secluded places, Tudor had thoroughly learned the difficult art of writing on glass. We were allowed to walk round the kitchen garden sometimes upon Sunday afternoons, and, occasionally, if a boy was seedy and separated from the rest for a day or two, for fear he had got something catching, such a boy was allowed in the kitchen garden under the eye of Harris, the kitchen gardener.
And Tudor often got queer and threatened to develop catching things, though he never really did; but on the days when he threatened, he generally escaped lessons and was allowed in the kitchen garden. Needless to say, that this place was full of opportunities for practising the art of writing on glass, and, as nothing was easier than to escape from the eye of Harris, he used these opportunities, and wrote his name and mine and many others on cucumber frames, and on the side of a hot-house used for growing grapes, and also on the window of a potting-shed.
I am Pratt, and Tudor and me were in the Lower Fourth. It was a class that Dr. Dunston, unfortunately, took for history, and on those occasions we went to his study for the lesson and stood in a row, which extended from the window to the front of Doctor Dunston's desk. He sat behind the desk, and took the class from there. But there was a great difference in Tudor and me, because I was at the top of the Lower Fourth and he was at the bottom. In the case of the Doctor's history class, however, this was a great advantage for Tudor, because the bottom of the class was by the window, and the top was in front of the Doctor.
Well, Tudor actually got the great idea of writing with his glazier's diamond on the Doctor's window! I advised him not, but he disdained my advice, and wrote in the left-hand top corner of the bottom sheet of glass. He wrote very small, but with great clearness, and it took him seven history lessons to finish, because it was only at rare moments he could do it. But the Doctor was now and then called out of his study by Mrs. Dunston, or somebody; and once he had to go and see the mother of a new boy who had written home to say he was being starved. It took ten minutes to calm this mother down, and during that interval Tudor finished his work. He had written the amusing words--