Preparation was nearly over when there came one of those heart-stopping crashes which all who hear know to be the total collapse of a human being. A faint—aye, and a faint in the first degree, when life goes out like a candle.
"Who's that? What's that?" cried the master-in-charge, quickly rising.
"It's Doe, sir. He's fainted."
"Oh, ah, I see," said he, leaving his desk and hastening to the spot. "Sit down, all of you. There's nothing very extraordinary in a boy fainting. Here, Stanley, pick him up and take him to the sick-room; and, Bickerton, go with him. The rest of you get on with your work."
Thereafter Pennybet—or, at least, so he assured us—expended his spare time in knocking his head against walls and holding his breath in the hope that he, too, might faint and have a restful holiday in the sick-room.
"For," said he, "where Doe and Ray are, there should Me be also."
§5
"It's funny that we do everything together," said Doe that same evening, as we lay in our beds and watched each other's eyes in the light of the turned-down gas. "First we're twins; then we get whacked together; then we both get rowed by prefects; and I do a faint and you do a sort of fit.... But, I say, Rupert, look here; I want to ask you something: will people think I was a fool in everything I did, or will they think—well, the other thing? I mean, let's put it like this—what would Radley think?"
"I don't know," said I, not very helpfully.