“Hear, hear!” said Mr Rampson, the heavy, solid-looking classical master, impressed by the Principal’s allusion to the Roman sports; and he grumbled out something in a subdued voice, with his eyes shut. What it was the boys did not hear, but it was evidently a Latin quotation, and ended in ibus.
The Doctor then marched slowly towards the door, with his black gown floating out around him, and carrying his mortar-board cap by the limp corner; for while everything about him was spick and span—his cravat of the stiffest and whitest as it supported his plump, pink, well-shaven chin, and his gown of the glossiest black—a habit of holding his college cap by its right-hand corner had resulted in the formation of a kind of hinge which made the University headpiece float up and down in concert with his stately steps as he turned his head from side to side and nodded benignantly at first one and then another of his junior pupils.
The masters followed, looking very severe indeed; and, following the example set by Mr Morris, they all frowned and shook their heads at the great waste of time that would follow the passing of the procession.
“So childish of the old man,” said Morris to the French master, Monsieur Brohanne, a particularly plump-looking Gaul. “The boys will be fit for nothing afterwards.”
“Certainement!” said the French master.
“But I suppose I must give orders for these seats to be placed;” and as soon as he was outside he summoned Wrench—the pale-faced and red-nosed official whose principal duty it was, with the assistance of a sturdy hobbledehoy (Mounseer Hobby-de-Hoy, as the boys called him) to keep well-blackened the whole of the boots in the big establishment—and gave orders to carry out and run a line of forms all along the outer wall of the great playground, which was continued farther on by the cricket-field hedge.
“A great waste of time,” said Morris; but he gave very strict orders to the man-servant that the biggest and strongest form was to be chalked “Number One,” and reserved for the masters only.
There was a buzz in the dining-hall which grew into a roar as the door closed. The boys, who had sat down to breakfast rather wanting in appetite—from the fact that their consciences were not very clear regarding studies in English and French or certain algebraic solutions or arrangements in angles specified by “A B C” and “D E F,” according to the declarations of a well-known gentleman named Euclid—felt in their great relief as if they would like another cup of coffee and two slices more, for the holiday was quite unexpected.
It was about this time that Slegge gave his opinion to his following, which was rather large, he being the senior pupil and considering himself head-chief of the school, not from his distinguished position as a scholar, but from the fact that his allowance of cash from home was the largest of that furnished to any pupil of the establishment, without counting extra tips. Slegge, Senior—not the pupil, for there was no other boy of the same name in the school, but Slegge père, as Monsieur Brohanne would have termed him—being sole proprietor of the great wholesale mercantile firm of Slegge, Gorrock and Dredge, Italian warehousemen, whose place of business was in the City of London, and was, as Slegge insisted, “not a shop.”
“You fellows,” he said, “can do as you like. Some of you had better set up a wicket and the net, and come and bowl to me. Ha, ha! look at Thames and the Nigger! It will just suit them. Those Indian chaps think of nothing else but show. I shan’t be at all surprised if the nigger goes up to dress and comes down again in white muslin and a turban.—I say! Hi! Thames! Rivers! What’s your stupid name? It’s going to be a hot day. You ought to come out with the chow-chow.”