“All right,” said Jeremy indifferently. “You know what you’ll get afterwards if you don’t do what you said,” and this was bold of Jeremy because he was smaller than Raseley, but he was learning already whom he might threaten and whom he might not, and he knew that Raseley was as terrified of physical pain as Aunt Amy was of a cow in a field. With very bad grace Raseley pushed the smaller half of the sausage across, and Jeremy felt that his day was well begun.
He did not know why, but he was sure that this would be a splendid day. There are days when you feel that you are under a special care of the gods and that they are arranging everything for you, background, incident, crisis, and sleep at the end in a most delightful, generous fashion. Nothing would go wrong to-day.
On the whole, human beings are divided into the two classes of those who realize when they may step out and challenge life, and those to whom one occasion is very much the same as another.
Jeremy, even when he was eight years old and had sat in his sister Helen’s chair on his birthday morning, had always realized when to step out. He was going to step out now.
The insufferable Baltimore, who was a wonderful cricketer and therefore rose to great glories in the summer term, but was no footballer at all, and equally, therefore, was less than the dust in the autumn, came with his watery eyes and froggy complexion to ask Jeremy to lend him twopence. Jeremy had at that moment threepence, but there were a number of things that he intended to do with it. Because he detested Baltimore he lent him his twopence with the air of Queen Elizabeth accepting Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak, and got exquisite pleasure from doing so. All these little things, therefore, combined to put him in the best of spirits when, at half-past eleven, Monsieur Clemenceau (not then a name known the wide world over) requested Monsieur Cole to be kind enough to allow him to peruse the three hundred lines which should have been done several days before so admirably provided by him.
Jeremy wore the cloak of innocence, sitting in the back row of the French class with several of his dearest friends and all the class ready to support him in any direction that he might follow.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Jeremy said. “Did you say three hundred lines?”
“That is the exact amount,” said M. Clemenceau, “that I require from you immediatement.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Jeremy politely.
“I need not repeat,” said M. Clemenceau. “Three hundred lines by you at once for impertinence three days previous.”