“Is it, sir? Let me see it, please. I have noticed an increasing disorder about your neck arrangements for a week past. You insult me and you insult the class by appearing here in these ridiculous ties.”
“It sha’n’t happen again, sir,” said Bray, trying to edge out of the class-room.
“No, Bray, it shall not,” said old Briggs. “Bring me that thing at once, please.”
Bray handed it up, and Briggs examined it as if it was a botanical specimen or something.
“This,” he announced, “is not a necktie at all. You’re wearing a piece of Brussels carpet, wretched boy--a fragment of the new carpet laid down yesterday in the Doctor’s study. You will kindly take it to him immediately, say who sent you, and state the purpose to which you were putting it.”
So Bray, by the terms of the match, lost, and Corkey minimus won with the yard measure.
Then the feeling between them grew, especially after Bray said that he could only pay his half-crown in instalments of a penny a week.
Now we come to Milly. You see she was Corkey minor’s great pal the term before, but now that he was at sea, and thousands of miles off, she chucked him and turned to Corkey minimus. That shows what she was really. Anyway, in a bad moment for young Corkey, she told him he had eyes like an eagle’s, and it simply turned his head. As an eagle’s eyes are yellow, I couldn’t see myself what there was to be so jolly pleased about; but he was, and, to show you what a chap may come to if a girl collars him, I know for a fact that Corkey minimus tried to paint a picture for her. Whether he actually succeeded I cannot say, but he went down four places in class, and got awfully dropped on by Browne.
Then came that attempt of Bray to cut Corkey out, and, being myself a tremendous personal chum of Corkey’s, I wished he had succeeded; but he didn’t, and even his fighting didn’t take Milly. After a month of giving her things to eat and so on, he said it was his red hair that stood between them, and told Fowle he didn’t care a straw about her; but from the way he went on to Corkey minimus, any fool could see he really cared a lot. The chap called Fowle comes in here. This “obscene Fowle,” as we called him out of Virgil, being really a term in a crib applied to harpies, though he would have run if a mouse had squeaked at him, was yet responsible for more fights than any fellow in the school. He sneaked about, asking chaps if they gave one another “best,” and when at last he found two who didn’t funk each other, though they might be perfectly good friends, he never rested until there was a fight. He got kicked sometimes, but not enough. That was owing to the fact that his hampers from home were most extraordinary. They came on Roman feast days, because he was a Roman Catholic by religion; and some fellows even said the more you kicked Fowle the more you were likely to get from the hampers. That was rot, of course, and a jolly suspicious thing happened once. Newnes--a chap in the lower Fifth--kicked Fowle the very morning before a hamper came; and that same evening, after prayers, Fowle gave Newnes about half a whacking big melon, and the next day Newnes jolly near died. Fowle swore he hadn’t put anything in the melon, but it is bosh to say that half a melon, if it’s all right, is going to do a chap any harm. Anyway, we rather funked Fowle’s hampers afterwards.
Well, this wretched, obscene Fowle met me one day licking his fat lips and showing great excitement. So I knew he’d probably worked up a fight; but it wasn’t that, though something worse. He said: