“No, he didn’t cane me or anything. He just talked, and told me a lot about several things I didn’t know, and said that familiar spirits were specially barred in the Bible. I never thought he’d have even tried to understand me; but he did, and he quite saw my side about the rat. He said kind words over it, too, and was sorry it was dead. And I’ve got to see Doctor Barnes to-morrow too, though, of course, it’s only having my rat on my mind that’s upset me. And he let me have it to b-bury gladly.”
“Where shall you arrange the rat?” I said.
“I’m sending it home in a stays-box that Jane gave me. I’ve written to my sister where to bury it. Jane it was who killed it. She cried like anything when I told her what ‘Mayne Reid’ was to me. But he’s in the book-post by now, beautifully done up in shavings and fresh geranium leaves. It’s no good talking any more. Only I will say that if he was a familiar spirit, he was a jolly good one, very different to the sort barred in the Scriptures. I don’t know how I’ll get on in the exams. now. I wish I was dead, too.”
Then he sniffed a bit, and went to sleep.
Browne, Bradwell, and Me
There’s more stuff torked about fagging at school than anything else in the world, as far as I can see; and being the smalest boy but two at Dunston’s, and a fag myself, I ought to know. Of corse, fags do get it pretty hot sometimes if they happen to fag for a beast, but big fellows aren’t beasts to small ones as a general thing. I’m sure Bradwell was the best chap that ever came to Dunston’s, and when he was expelled over the seege in the Wing Dormatery--him and Trelawny--I felt frightful. I’m Watson minor myself, my brother being Watson major, one of the reserves for the second eleven and captain of the third.
The thing I’m going to write out happened just before the seege, and was all over before that; and it shows what a fag can do. It also shows what a jolly good thing it is for big fellows to treat fags well, and give them odds and ends so as to get their affecksun. If I hadn’t felt what I did to Bradwell, I shouldn’t have run the awful risks I did for him. What I did certinly ruined a great project of Bradwell’s, and upsett him a good bit at the time. But he said afterwards, when the blow had fallen, and when he could look back and think of it without smacking my head, that I had ment well. I remember his very words, for that matter. He said, “Your intenshuns were all right--I will say that--but you’ve ruined my life.” No chap could say farer than that; and, mind you, I did ruin his life in a way. I’ve heard many fellows say Bradwell was a bounder by birth; but he never was to me.
Well, Bradwell had a great admeration for Mabel Dunston, the Doctor’s youngest daughter but one, and she had an equal great admeration for him, for two terms. Bradwell, although a great sportsman in other ways, was fond of girls. If he passed a school of them he would look awfully rum and reddish in the face an’ watery in the eyes. Once, going with him to the playing-field for a football match, he made the distance half a mile longer by going up a side-street to avoid the high-school girls; and I asked him why, and he said it was cheek, but told me all the same. He said, “You can’t meet women got up like this.” Bradwell has frightfully thin calves to his legs when seen in “knickers,” though he is the best goalkeeper that was ever known at Dunston’s. Of course, his affair with Mabel Dunston would never have got to be known by me but for my great use to Bradwell in carrying notes. Being in the Doctor’s house that term I was easily able to do this, and there was a jar of green stuff in the hall where she told me to leave the notes, which I did. She was fifteen, I believe, or else sixteen, but well on in years anyway, and a few months older than Bradwell. It was his general brillance won her, for he could do anything, and his father had plenty of money, being a man like Whitely’s in London, only in the North of England. Bradwell drew almost as well as pictures in books, and he used to illustrate the Latin grammar for his special chums. There’s a part of the Latin grammar called Syntax, which I haven’t come to yet myself, but it has rather rummy things in it, with both the Latin and English of them. And Bradwell used to illustrate these things; and he illustrated two in my grammar out of puer kindness to me. One was, “Balbus is crowning the boy’s head with a garland”; and the other was, “A snake appeared to Sulla while sacrifising”; and you never saw anything better. They were done on the margin in ink, and the snake appearing to Sulla was about the queerest and best thing even seen in a Latin grammar.
I have to tell you this because such a lot happened owing to it.
Now Browne took my class, which is the lowest in the school, and I am seventh in it. And I gradually got to hate Browne, because Bradwell did, and for other reesons of my own to. Browne was said to be only twenty-two, and he looked younger than many of the chaps, his moustashe being whitish and invisibel to the eye. He wore necktyes which I remember hearing Mathers say were an insult to nature, and would have made a rainbow curl up and faint. We always noticed, at arithmetic times, that Browne, if he got a stumper, would put up the lid of his private desk and hide behind it--of course, looking the thing up in his crib. Then he would wander round, as if by accident, to the chap and do the sum off quick while he remembered it. Bradwell always hated him; and when he found that Browne was very friendly with Mabel and Mabel was very friendly with Browne, he hated him far, far wurse.