He sprang up again in horror at the very thought of this, drew up his knees, and passed his arms round them, to sit for long enough packed up with his chin upon his knees somewhat after the fashion of a Peruvian mummy.
“It’s horrible,” he groaned to himself—“horrible, that’s what it is. And this is being what mother calls a good son. They’ll be nice and proud of me when they know.
“Ah–h–h–ah! There goes that wretched old clock over the gateway again! It can’t be five minutes since it chimed before. It seems to have been chiming ever since I came to bed. What time is it, I wonder? Bah! three-quarters past. Three-quarters past what? Oh dear, how thirsty I am! and I’ve had three glasses of water since I came to bed. Going to feed the ducks! Oh, I wish I’d said I’d go out and fight with Drew, and pinked him as he calls it. He wouldn’t have been able to lead me into this scrape. But more likely he would have pinked me. Well, and a precious good thing too. It would have been all right, and I couldn’t then have gone.
“Phew! how hot it is. My skin seems to prickle and tingle, as if somebody had been playing tricks with the bed; and all this time I believe that miserable dandy Drew is snoring away, and not troubling a bit. There, if it isn’t chiming again! It can’t be a quarter of an hour since I heard it last. Ting, tang. Last quarter. Well, go on; four quarters, and then strike, and I shall know what time it is. What! A quarter past? Well, a quarter past what? Oh, that clock’s wrong. It chimed three-quarters just now. It can’t have chimed the four quarters since, and struck the hour; it’s impossible. I’m sure it must be wrong.”
He threw himself down again in despair, feeling as if sleep were farther off than ever.
“Oh dear!” he moaned; “Drew told me I seemed a year older after that row. I feel another year older since then; and if it goes on like this, I shall be like an old man by morning. But there, I’m not going to give up in this cowardly way. I’ll show Master Drew that I’m not such a boy as he thinks for. It’s all nonsense! Just because I went and dined there with him and his friend, and was then led into standing up with them and joining hands, I’m to be considered as having joined them, and become a Jacobite! Why, it’s childish; and as to his threats of what they would do if I ran back, I don’t care, I won’t believe it. I’m not such a baby. Death indeed! I’ve only just begun to live.
“Ugh! it was very ugly, very shocking to see those heads stuck up there over Temple Bar; and yet Drew took it as coolly as could be. Why, it was he who ought to have been frightened, not I. And I’m not frightened—I won’t be frightened. I won’t say anything; but I’m not going there again. No, I won’t speak—unless they do threaten me. Then I must tell all. But only wait till morning, and I’ll have it out with Master Drew. Not quite so much of a schoolboy as he thinks me.
“There’ll be no sleep for me to-night,” he said at last, in a resigned way. “Well, it’s perhaps so much the better. I have been able to think out what I mean to do, and now I’ll just try and arrange what I shall say to Drew in the morning; and, after that, I’ll get up and dress, and have a long read. I do wonder, though, what time it is.”
He then lay wondering and waiting for the clock to chime again, but he did not hear it chime its next quarter, for now that he had made up his mind not to go to sleep, sleep came to him with one of those sudden seizures which drop us in an instant into the oblivion which gives rest and refreshment to the wearied body and brain.
Then, all at once, as he lay with his eyes closed, he did hear it plainly.