“Not to your brother, eyen? don’t attempt to deceive me!”
“No, indeed, sir, I would not tell a lie; if I had mentioned it to Percy, I’d say so at once,” returned Hugh, colouring at his assertion being doubted.
“I believe you,” replied Norman, glancing towards Biggington as he spoke to attract his attention. “I am sure you are a brave, honourable boy, who would neither tell a lie nor betray a secret, which is worse, if anything.”
At this commendation, Hugh’s eyes sparkled, and a bright, honest smile lit up his innocent, childish face, which ought to have touched the hearts and disarmed the purpose of those who, for their own selfish ends, were thus deliberately leading him into evil; it probably would have done so, were it not a well-established fact in pathology, that, during the phase of public schoolboyhood, the human heart remains in a torpid or chrysalis state; the animal, at that period, consisting of a head, a stomach, and (fortunately for those who have the control of it, as well for its future chance of developing into a reasonable mortal) a tail also. Not being actuated by any such tender feelings, or indeed by an feelings at all, except selfish ones, Biggington replied to Norman’s look by stroking his chin. Stradwick stroked his at the same moment, giving involuntarily a slight shudder at the alarming future to which he was thus committing himself. Terry only grinned, which indeed was his invariable custom on all occasions, solemn or comic.
“As I am now convinced that you are trustworthy,” resumed Norman, “I am going to tell you a secret; the secret, in fact, upon the safe keeping of which depends your going to the play.”
“Or getting every bone in your skin broken,” muttered Biggington in an aside, which was, however, sufficiently audible to convey to Hugh a knowledge of the alternative which awaited him.
“Mr. Biggington, these other gentlemen, and myself,” continued Norman, “mean to go to the theatre this evening, and if you will do exactly as we tell you, we will take you with us.”
“But the Doctor!” exclaimed Hugh, aghast.
“That is the very point I was about to touch upon,” rejoined Norman, in no way discomposed: “the Doctor not approving of the younger boys being out at night, thought himself obliged to give a general order to the whole school; but at the same time he contrived to have it hinted privately to us, that if the elder members of the sixth form chose to go, he should not make any inquiries about it; the only point he insisted on being, that such an expedition must be managed privately, and without his being supposed to know anything about it. Now in order to contrive this, we had thought of making our way in at night (we can easily get out unobserved after five o’clock school), through the window in the loft; but, as you say, and as I now remember, it is too small to render that possible,—we want you to get through the sky-light into the school-room (as we were talking about this morning), and unfasten the little door which opens into the playground; it is only secured by one bolt, which is not above your reach, so you can easily undo it. If you will undertake this, and promise faithfully not to breathe a word about it to anybody, you shall go with us to the play.” Poor Hugh was sorely puzzled; and his sense of right and wrong entirely confused; one idea, however, soon extricating itself from the chaos, he immediately gave it utterance. “The Doctor,” he said, “will be angry with me, sir, though he may not be so with you, for I am only a little fellow, and a long way off the sixth form.”
Norman hesitated; he knew that if they were discovered he should be quite unable to protect the child from punishment, and a sense of self-respect made him adverse to pledge himself to anything which he could not perform.