CHAPTER V—A GAME OF FOOTBALL AND A DANCE IN PENDRAGON HAVE THEIR PART IN THE SCHEME OF THINGS
I.
LATER there is Mr. Perrin heavily—with the midday mutton close about his head—surveying, in his dingy and tattered sitting-room, four small boys who gaze at him with staring eyes and jumping throats.
It is a piece of English poetry that has brought them, miserably, by the ears—Browning's “Patriot,” one verse a week, to be said every Tuesday morning first hour, and to be forgotten eagerly, completely forgotten, every Tuesday morning second hour.
I go in the rain and, more than needs
The rope—the rope—the rope—
Johnson Minor gazed miserably at his companions and, finding no help in man, but only a jesting glory at his misfortunes, dizzily, despairingly, to the top row of Mr. Perrin's bookcase, where Advanced Algebra and Mensuration hold perpetual war and rivalry.
It was a desperate affair altogether, because it was the afternoon of a football match—a great football match against a mighty Truro team,—and already the gathering multitude in the field below flung a derisive murmur at the dusty panes.
But Mr. Perrin was motionless. He offered no assistance, he suggested no remedy, he merely tapped with his bone paper-knife on the red tablecloth—a tap that showed Johnson Minor once and for all that his case was hopeless:
A rope—a rope that—