Concerning Corkey Minimus
I
If Corkey minor had been at school that term the thing would never have come about; but Corkey minor was always one of the lucky chaps, and just when, in the ordinary course of events, he would have had to begin fagging for an exam., something happened to his right lung, and he had to go on an awful fine trip to Australia in a sailing ship. That left Corkey major, who was a mere learning machine in the Sixth, and Corkey minimus, who was ten, and in the Lower Fourth.
It began like this. After Bray had licked Derbyshire and Bethune, which he did one after the other on the same half-holiday, chaps gave him “best,” as a matter of course, and he became cock of the lower school. He was solid muscle all through, and harder than stone, and he had a brother in London who was runner-up in the amateur “light-weight” championship two years following. Bray fancied himself a bit, naturally, and was always roaming about seeking fellows to punch. But once, out of bounds in a private wood, a keeper caught him and licked him, which was seen by two other fellows, and remembered against Bray afterwards when he put on too much side.
He and Corkey minimus were in the same class, because Bray, though thirteen, didn’t know much. At first they were great chums, and Bray bossed Corkey and palled with him; and when Browne, the under mathematical master, told Corkey minimus that he was “the least of all the Corkeys, and not worthy to be called a Corkey,” because he couldn’t do rule-of-three, or some rot, Bray said a thing that Browne overheard, and got sent up. But by degrees the friendship of Bray and Corkey minimus cooled off, and the matter of Milly settled it.
The Doctor had four daughters, and Milly was the youngest. Mabel and Ethel held no dealings with any fellows under the Sixth, and Mary had something wrong with her spine and didn’t count. But I never cared for any of them myself, because you couldn’t tell what they meant. Beatrice, for instance, was absolutely engaged to Morris, for he told his sister so in the holidays, and his sister told Morris minor, and he told me the next term. Morris was the head of the school, and he had her photograph fixed into a foreign nut which he wore on his watch-chain. But when he left, and she found out he was gone into a bank at £80 a year, she dropped him like a spider. Mind you, Morris had told her he was descended, on his mother’s side, from a race of old Irish kings, which may have unsettled her. Anyway, when she found he came, on his father’s side, from a race of church curates, she wrote and said it was off.
But there were other things that upset the chumming of Bray and Corkey minimus before the Milly row, and they ought to be taken in turn. First, there was the Old Testament prize, which was the only thing Bray had the ghost of a chance of getting. But Corkey beat him by twenty-three marks; and Bray said afterwards that Corkey had cribbed a lot of stuff about Joshua, and Corkey said he hadn’t, and even declared he knew as much about Joshua as Bray, and a bit over. Then, on top of that, came the match with neckties, which was rather a rum match in its way. Both of them used to be awfully swagger about their neckties, and each fancied his own. So one bet the other half a crown he would wear a different necktie every day for a month. The month being June, that meant thirty different neckties each, and the chap who wore the best neckties would win. A fellow called Fowle was judge, being the son of an artist; and neither Bray nor Corkey was allowed to buy a single new tie or add to the stock he had in his box. At the end of a fortnight they stood about equal, though Corkey’s ties were rather more artistic than Bray’s, which were chiefly yellow and spotted. But then came an awful falling away, and some of the affairs they wore were simply weird. The test for these was if the tie passed in class. Then the terms of the match were altered, and they decided to go on wearing different things till one or other was stopped by a master. Any concern not noticed was considered a necktie “in the ordinary acceptation of that term,” as Fowle put it. At the end of the third week Corkey minimus came out in an umbrella cover done in a sailor’s knot, but nobody worth mentioning spotted it; and the next day Bray wore a bit of blue ribbon off a chocolate box, which also passed. They struggled on this sort of way till Bray got bowled over. I think Corkey was wearing a yard-measure dipped in red ink that morning, but it looked rather swagger than not. Class was just ended, when old Briggs, of all people--a man who wore two pairs of spectacles at one time very often--said to Bray:
“What is that round your neck, boy?” And Bray said:
“My tie, sir.”
Then Briggs said: