At that moment Perrin came in. He was continuing, as he entered, a conversation with some small boy whose head just appeared at the door for a moment and revealed Garden Minimus.
“Well, a hundred times,” Perrin was saying, “and you don't go out till you 've done it.”
Garden displayed annoyance, and was heard to mutter under his breath. Perrin's face was gray; his hair appeared to be unbrushed, and there was a good deal of white chalk on the back of his sleeve.
“Really, it's too bad,” he said to no one in particular and certainly not to Traill. “I don't know what's come over that boy—nothing but continuous impertinence. He shall go up to the Head if he isn't careful. Such a nice boy, too, before this term.”
At this moment he saw that Traill was reading the Morning Post and Clinton the Daily Mail. He looked as though he were going to say something, then by a tremendous effort controlled himself. He stood in front of the dismal fire and looked at the other two, at the dreary window-panes and the driving rain, at the dusty pigeon-holes, the untidy heap of books, the torn lists hanging from the wall.
He had slept badly—had lain awake for hours thinking of Miss Desart, of his own miserable condition, of his poor mother—and then, slumbering at last, in an instant he had been pulled, dragged wide-awake by that thundering, clamoring bell.
He had been so tired that his eyes had refused to open, and he had sat stupidly on the edge of his bed with his head swaying and nodding. Then he had been late for preparation, and he knew that they had been “playing about” and had rubbed Somerset-Walpole's head in the ink and had stamped on his body, because, although it was so early, Somerset-Walpole's eyes were already red, his back a horrible confusion of dust and chalk, his hair and collar ink and disaster.
He was sorry for Somerset-Walpole, whose days were a perpetual tragedy; but as there was no other obvious victim, he selected him for the subject of his wrath, expatiated to the form on the necessity of getting up clean in the morning, and sent the large, blubbering creature up to the matron to be cleansed and scolded. Verily the delights of some people's school days have been vastly exaggerated!
Then Garden Minimus had been discovered sticking nibs into the fleshy portion of his neighbor, and, although he had vehemently denied the crime, had been heavily punished and had therefore sulked during the rest of the hour. At breakfast-time Perrin had called him up to him and had hinted that if he chose to be agreeable once again the punishment might be relaxed; but Garden did not please, and sulked and muttered under his breath, and Perrin thought he had caught the word “Pompous.”
All these things may have been slight in themselves, but combined they amounted to a great deal—and all before half-past eight in the morning. Also he had had very little to eat.