“Well, it’s pretty measly, considering the opinion the Doctor’s got of you. I sha’n’t try to score off your rat, because I know it’s a jolly fine one, and I like it; but Freckles or somebody will very likely kill it after this.”
He looked in a fair funk when the dreadful thought of having his rat killed came to him. Before the end of that day he spoke to every chap in the class separately, and all but three promised and swore not to lay a finger on the rat. But Freckles, Murdoch, and Morrant wouldn’t swear. Finally he paid Morrant sixpence and so got him over, and Murdoch he let crib off him in “prep.” three times; and Freckles, who was an awfully sportsmanlike chap really, said he was only rotting all the time, and would be the last to do a classy rat like Ferrars’s any harm. In fact, he said he’d much sooner kill Ferrars himself.
Mind you, though, of course, it was simply barbarous for Ferrars to think that his piebald rat could have any effect on his work, yet he proved to me that his success in school and his great popularity with the Doctor dated from the coming of the thing. When he first got it, it was a mere cub-rat, so to say; now, though not a year old, it had turned into as fine a rat as you could wish to meet anywhere. In appearance it had pink eyes and a white head, and a fairish amount of white fur about the body, which got thinner on its stomach, so that you could see the pink skin through to some extent. But the piebaldness of the rat was the great feature. It had two big round patches of fur like the common or garden rat, and one small patch at the nape of its neck; and in addition to this it had one large patch of beautiful yellowish fur, such as you chiefly see on guinea-pigs. Its tail was pink and long, and quite hairless.
Ferrars often kept back good things at meals for it, and the bond between them seemed to grow rummer and rummer, till he let the rat get on his mind, and Wilson said he was getting dotty about it. Which I think was true, for one day, going into the class-room to get a knife from my desk, I saw Ferrars with his rat out, talking to it. He was swatting like anything in play-hours for a special Old Testament history prize, and he had the rat and the Bible and various books of reference all before him. Then, not knowing I was there, he spoke:
“I must win it, ‘Mayne Reid.’ Stick to me this time, old chap, and see me through.”
He called his rat “Mayne Reid” because that was his favorite author.
And “Mayne Reid” seemed to understand, and he turned his pink eyes on to the open Bible and walked over it. Finding he’d walked over the ninth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, Ferrars got excited, and, seeing me, said, “By Jove! then I’ll learn that chapter by heart, though it is so long. It’s good, exciting stuff, anyway, and I bet my rat walking over it means that there’ll be a question about Jehu and Jezebel.”
“You’ll go cracked about that rat,” I said.
“It’s part of my life,” he answered. “I know it seems very peculiar, and so it is, and I don’t suppose such a thing ever happened before, but something tells me my prosperity and success is all bound up in that rat. He’s a familiar spirit, in fact, like Saul had. If he died I should never do much more good, and very likely stick in this class for the rest of my days.”
“You’d better not think like that,” I said, “because rats are short-lived things, owing to the nasty food they eat. Not that ‘Mayne Reid’ has nasty food; but all pink-eyed animals are delicate, and you’ll have to lose him sooner or later.”