Then, unluckily, as an afterthought, he demanded a clearance on the spot; and he was pretty well staggered to find the result.
“I will ask you, Ferrars, as head boy of the class, and one, I am happy to think, above any of this childish folly, to inspect the desks, one by one, and report to me where you find indications of life,” said the Doctor.
Ferrars is always right with the Doctor, chiefly because he has a face like a stone angel in church, and a very smooth voice, and a remarkably swagger knowledge of the Scriptures. He is also a tremendous worker, and will go into the Upper Fourth next term as sure as eggs. It was jolly awkward for Ferrars then, because he happened to be one of the keenest natural history chaps of all, and had a piebald rat, which even fellows in the Sixth had offered him half-a-crown and three shillings for, yet he would not part with it. So, though we didn’t like him much, we felt almost sorry for the fix he was in now. Of course, we thought that such a demon on Religious Knowledge as Ferrars would drag out his piebald rat right away, and perhaps even give it to the Doctor, or offer to sell it for the alms-box; but he didn’t. He got up, rather white about the gills, and opened the desks one by one; and a jolly happy family it was. Only the Doctor scattered the things to the four winds, till there wasn’t an atom of natural history left in the whole class-room except Ferrars’s piebald rat, snug in his desk.
First Fowle, who goes in for water things, had to empty his jam-jar of tadpoles out into the playground, which was a beastly cruel thing to make him do, because they all died, still being in the gill stage; then Freckles was sent off with a young rabbit to the hay-field, and he got caned too, because, strangely enough, the Doctor hadn’t forgotten his guinea-pigs; and Morrant’s two sparrows were let go, which was no kindness to them, because Morrant had cut their wings so jolly short it would have taken them months to grow enough feathers to fly with, and meantime a cat got them both; and Playfair’s mole, which, by-the-way, had been queer for some time, owing to having no earth to burrow in, was ordered to be sent to the cricket-field. There were a lot of other things, but Corkey minimus scored rather, because his goat-sucker moth laid a hundred and fourteen eggs on Todhunter’s algebra a few hours before it was let free. Corkey minimus says a goat-sucker moth’s nothing worth mentioning after it’s laid eggs, but the eggs turn into fine caterpillars.
The few things the Doctor didn’t know what to do with, and didn’t like to have killed, he said must be given to the gardener. He thought it would be better to put my mouse out of its misery, and turned it over on my hand with a gold pencil-case, and said it had probably got a chill to its vital organs and would die; but old Briggs explained that it might live if put in cotton-wool; so the gardener looked to it, and it did live, and I took it home at the end of that term, and have it still, though it is getting oldish now, and has lost half its tail. But it’s a good mouse yet.
Of course the extraordinary thing was Ferrars. After the Doctor had gone, old Briggs, to whom he had whispered something before he went, gave out that his natural history half-hours would be suspended for the rest of the term; then I got a word with Ferrars. I said:
“However did you have the cheek--you supposed to be such a saint?”
He said:
“I don’t know. Something came over me to do it. I’ve got a jolly peculiar feeling to that rat. It’s not an ordinary rat. I’m wrapped up in it. Even my respect for the Doctor couldn’t stand against it. I know what you chaps think. I dare say you reckon I’m a hound, but I couldn’t help doing what I did. Somehow that rat’s a sort of ‘mascotte’ to me. A mascotte’s a thing that brings luck. All my best luck’s happened since I had it.”
Of course, when a chap goes on like that, what can you do? I didn’t understand Ferrars. He seemed to me to be simply talking rot. So I said: