The Crofton Boys

by Harriet Martineau

Perhaps the usher saw this; for when he called Hugh up, he was very kind. He looked at the Latin grammar he had used with Miss Harold, and saw by the dogs’-ears exactly how far Hugh had gone in it, and asked him only what he could answer very well. Hugh said three declensions, with only one mistake. Then he was shown the part that he was to say to-morrow morning; and Hugh walked away, all the happier for having something to do, like everybody else. He was so little afraid of the usher, that he went back to him to ask where he had better sit.

“Sit! O! I suppose you must have a desk, though you have nothing to put in it. If there is a spare desk, you shall have it: if not, we will find a corner for you somewhere.”

Some of the boys whispered that Mrs Watson’s footstool, under her apron, would do: but the usher overheard this, and observed that it took some people a good while to know a new boy; and that they might find that a little fellow might be as much of a man as a big one. And the usher called the oldest boy in the school, and asked him to see if there was a desk for little Proctor. There was: and Hugh put into it his two or three school-books, and his slate; and felt that he was now indeed a Crofton boy. Then, the usher was kinder than he had expected; and he had still to see Mr Tooke, of whom he was not afraid at all. So Hugh’s spirits rose, and he liked the prospect of breakfast as well as any boy in the school.

There was one more rebuff for him, first, however. He ran up to his room, to finish combing his hair, while the other boys were thronging into the long room to breakfast. He found the housemaids there, making the beds; and they both cried “Out! Out!” and clapped their hands at him, and threatened to tell Mrs Watson of his having broken rules, if he did not go this moment Hugh asked what Mrs Watson would say to his hair, if he went to breakfast with it as it was. One of the maids was good-natured enough to comb it for him, for once: but she said he must carry a comb in his pocket; as the boys were not allowed to go to their rooms, except at stated hours.

At last, Hugh saw Mr Tooke. When the boys entered school at nine o’clock, the master was at his desk. Hugh went up to his end of the room, with a smiling face, while Tom Holt hung back; and he kept beckoning Tom Holt on, having told him there was nothing to be afraid of. But when, at last, Mr Tooke saw him, he made no difference between the two, and seemed to forget having ever seen Hugh. He told them he hoped they would be good boys, and would do credit to Crofton; and then he asked Mr Carnaby to set them something to learn. And this was all they had to do with Mr Tooke for a long while.

This morning in school, from nine till twelve, seemed the longest morning these little boys had ever known. When they remembered that the afternoon would be as long, and every morning and afternoon for three months, their hearts sank. Perhaps, if any one had told them that the time would grow shorter and shorter by use, and at last, when they had plenty to do, almost too short, they would not have believed it, because they could not yet feel it. But what they now found was only what every boy and girl finds, on beginning school, or entering upon any new way of life.

Mr Carnaby, who was busy with others, found it rather difficult to fill up their time. When Hugh had said some Latin, and helped his companion to learn his first Latin lesson, and both had written a copy, and done a sum, Mr Carnaby could not spare them any more time or thought, and told them they might do what they liked, if they only kept quiet, till school was up. So they made out the ridiculous figures which somebody had carved upon their desks, and the verses, half rubbed out, which were scribbled inside: and then they reckoned, on their slates, how many days there were before the Christmas holidays;—how many school-days, and how many Sundays. And then Hugh began to draw a steamboat in the Thames, as seen from the leads of his father’s house; while Holt drew on his slate the ship in which he came over from India. But before they had done, the clock struck twelve, school was up, and there was a general rush into the playground.

Now Hugh was really to see the country. Except that the sun had shone pleasantly into his room in the morning, through waving trees, nothing had yet occurred to make him feel that he was in the country. Now, however, he was in the open air, with trees sprinkled all over the landscape, and green fields stretching away, and the old church tower half-covered with ivy. Hugh screamed with pleasure; and nobody thought it odd, for almost every boy was shouting. Hugh longed to pick up some of the shining brown chestnuts which he had seen yesterday in the road, under the trees; and he was now cantering away to the spot, when Phil ran after him, and roughly stopped him, saying he would get into a fine scrape for the first day, if he went out of bounds.

Hugh had forgotten there were such things as bounds, and was not at all glad to be reminded of them now. He sighed as he begged Phil to show him exactly where he might go and where he might not Phil did so in an impatient way, and then was off to trap-ball, because his party were waiting for him.

The chestnut-trees overhung one corner of the playground, within the paling: and in that corner Hugh found several chestnuts which had burst their sheaths, and lay among the first fallen leaves. He pocketed them with great delight, wondering that nobody had been before him to secure such a treasure. Agnes should have some; and little Harry would find them nice playthings. They looked good to eat too; and he thought he could spare one to taste; so he took out his knife, cut off the point of a fine swelling chestnut, and tasted a bit of the inside. Just as he was making a face over it, and wondering that it was so nasty, when those which his father roasted in the fire-shovel on Christmas-day were so good, he heard laughter behind him, and found that he was again doing something ridiculous, though he knew not what: and in a moment poor Hugh was as unhappy as ever.