“Oh! don't, sir, don't say it again, or you will be the death of me,” replied Thomas, struggling against a relapse; “why, bless your innocence, what could ever make you think master would take your clothes?”
“Make me think? why, Lawless told me so,” answered I, “and he also said it was not the first time such a thing had occurred either.”
“You'll have enough to do, sir, if you believe all our young gents tell you; why, master would as soon think of flying as of stealing anything. It was Mr. Coleman as put them up the chimbley; he's always a playing some trick or another for everlasting.”
A pause ensued, during which the whole affair in its true bearings became for the first time clear to my mind's eye; the result of my cogitations may be gathered from the following remark, which escaped me as it were involuntarily—“What a confounded ass I have made of myself, to be sure!”
Should any of my readers be rude enough to agree with me in this particular, let them reflect for a moment on the peculiar position in which I was placed. Having lived from childhood in a quiet country parsonage, with my father and mother, and a sister younger than myself, as my sole companions, “mystification”—that is, telling deliberate falsehoods by way of a joke—was a perfectly novel idea to me; and, when that joke involved the possibility of such serious consequences as offending the tutor under whose care we were placed, I (wholly ignorant of the impudence and recklessness of public school boys) considered such a solution of the mystery inconceivable. Moreover, everything around me was so strange, and so entirely different from the habits of life in which I had been hitherto brought up, that for the time my mind was completely bewildered. I appeared to have lost my powers of judgment, and to have relapsed, as far as intellect was concerned, into childhood again. My readers must excuse this digression, but it appeared to me necessary to explain how it was possible for a lad of fifteen to have been made the victim of such a palpably absurd deception without its involving the necessity of his not being “so sharp as he should be”.
The promised “something warm” made its appearance ere long, in the shape of tea and toast, which, despite my alarming seizure, I demolished with great gusto in bed (for I did not dare to get up), feeling, from the fact of my having obtained it under false pretences, very like a culprit all the while. Having finished my breakfast, and allowed sufficient time to elapse for my recovery, I got up, and, selecting a pair of trousers which appeared to have suffered less from their sojourn in the chimney than the others, dressed myself, and soon after eleven o'clock made my appearance in the pupils' room, where I found Dr. Mildman seated at his desk, and the pupils apparently very hard at work.
“How do you find yourself now you are up, Fairlegh?” inquired my tutor kindly.
“Quite well, sir, thank you,” I replied, feeling like an impostor.
“Quite recovered?” continued he.
“Everything—entirely, I mean,” stammered I, thinking of my trousers.