Pip and Pipette occupied a humble position in the Third Class, where they soon developed a fervent admiration for pretty Miss Amelia, who was always smiling, always daintily dressed, and charmingly inaccurate and casual.
On Thursday afternoons the whole school assembled in the Music Room. Here faded Miss Arabella thumped mechanically on the piano, while the pupils of Wentworth House School chanted an inexplicable and interminable ditty entitled "Doh-ray-me-fah." The words of this canticle were printed on a canvas sheet upon the wall, and the method of inculcation was somewhat peculiar. Mr. Pocklington, taking his stand beside the sheet, would lay the tip of his little white wand upon the word "Doh" printed at the bottom. Miss Arabella would strike a note upon the piano, and the school would reproduce the same with no uncertain sound, sustaining it by one prolonged howl until the white wand slid up to "Ray," an example which the vocalists would attempt to follow to the best of their ability, and with varying degrees of success. Having rallied and concentrated his forces on "Ray," Mr. Pocklington would advance to "Me," and then to "Fah," the effects achieved by the elder male choristers, whose voices were reaching the cracking stage, as the scale approached the topmost "Doh," being as surprising as they were various.
The hour always concluded with a sort of musical steeplechase. The white wand would skip incontinently from Doh to Fah, and from Me to Soh, the singers following after—faint yet pursuing. At the end of three minutes, the field having tailed out, so to speak, every note in the gamut was being sung, fortissimo, by at least one member of the choir, and the total effect was more suggestive of a home for lost dogs than an academy for the sons and daughters of gentlemen.
Our friends enjoyed this diversion hugely. Pipette, who could carol like a lark, hopped from note to note with an agility only equalled by that of the white wand itself. Pip, who had no music in his soul, adopted a different method of procedure. Selecting a note well within his compass, he would stick to it with characteristic thoroughness and a gradually blackening countenance, until a final flourish from the white wand intimated to all and sundry that this nuisance must now cease.
Pip and Pipette were also submitted to a rather farcical ordeal which Mr. Pocklington called his "common-sense test." Shortly after their arrival they were called into the Study, where Mr. Pocklington, after a little homily on the danger of judging by appearances and the fallaciousness of giving preference to quantity rather than quality, produced a threepenny-bit and a penny, and commanded his auditors to take their choice. Pipette unhesitatingly picked the threepenny-bit, and was commended for her acumen. Pip, when it came to his turn, selected the penny, and after being soundly rated for his stupidity was cast forth from the Study and bidden to learn sense. A week later he was again put to the test, and again chose the penny, repeating his performance with stolid regularity when given a further opportunity of redeeming his character the following week. After that the affair developed into a kind of round game, Mr. Pocklington producing the two coins from time to time and Pip invariably selecting the penny,—a proceeding which gave his preceptor unlimited opportunities for tiresome little lectures to the school in general, and Pip in particular, on the subjects mentioned above.
Finally, after the entertainment had been repeated week by week for some time, Pipette, whose loyal little soul chafed at the sycophantic giggles of the other boys and girls when Pip was being scarified by Mr. Pocklington, boldly broached the matter to her brother.
"Pip, why don't you take the fripenny-bit? If you did he'd stop bein' so howwid to you."
Pip regarded his sister's small eager face with cold scorn.
"If once I took the threepenny-bit," he replied, "he'd stop offerin' the money altogether. Why, I've made eightpence since I came here. Silly kid!"
This was the last occasion in their lives on which Pipette ever questioned the wisdom of her beloved brother's actions.