‘Please, sir,’ he said, ‘they think I have sneaked of them.’
‘Who are they?’ said Mr. Selby.
‘Please, sir, the fellows in the house,’ was the answer.
‘What makes them think so?’ asked Mr. Selby.
‘Because Mr. Brandiston caught them boxing on Sunday, and they say I told him,’ answered Gerald.
It appeared (although Gerald was careful not to mention any names) that some boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house who were proficients in the noble art of self-defence, Tracy being one of the ringleaders among them, and a boy named Vansittart another, had arranged for a grand display of pugilistic skill at five o’clock one Sunday afternoon. They chose that day and that time, not as having any special desire to violate the law, divine or human, of the Sabbath, but because it was then that Mr. Brandiston, as was well known, devoted himself to his family and friends and perhaps a few boys who were invited to join his domestic circle at tea. Nobody had ever heard of Mr. Brandiston appearing among the boys of his house on Sunday afternoon. The pugilists had, therefore, assumed that it would be safe to begin operations at that time. The boxing would be doubly offensive to Mr. Brandiston as being calculated to bring discredit upon his house, partly because it was itself an exhibition which was wholly opposed to his feelings, but still more because it took place on a Sunday, a day which ought, in his opinion, on grounds of social etiquette even more than of religious obligation, to be kept sacred. But if he had dreamed of the possibility of his house becoming the scene of Sabbatarian pugilism, he would have entertained the further objection that pugilism in a boarding house is at the best only a disguised form of bullying; for it is sure to mean, not that the boys who box are experts or volunteers, but that pressure is put upon young and delicate boys to enter the lists against boys a great deal stronger than themselves. And this was actually the case; for the combatants consisted not only of fifth form boys who were allowed to arrange sparring-matches among themselves, but of lower boys who were expected to box against anybody who might be chosen as their opponent by lot, or more probably at the discretion of Tracy and his friends. These considerations, however, Mr. Selby mentally supplied; they were not part of the story as told to him. What he learnt from Gerald was that the company had assembled on Sunday afternoon in one of the largest rooms of the house; the tables had been pushed back, a ring had been formed, an immense assortment of boxing-gloves of various sizes and colours had been produced; Tracy and Vansittart, acting at once as seconds and umpires, had seated themselves, with towels and sponges in their hands, on chairs at opposite extremities of the ring; two lower boys who had been told off to begin the boxing had divested themselves of their coats and waistcoats, donned the gloves, and sparred a couple of rounds amidst as much applause as was deemed compatible with the secrecy of the proceedings, when the door was suddenly and quietly opened, and in walked—Mr. Brandiston.
A meteorite falling from the sky would not have created deeper consternation than the appearance of the house master at that time among the boys of his own house.
Mr. Brandiston surveyed the scene with an air of terrible but repressed indignation.
‘And this,’ he said at last, ‘on a Sunday afternoon in my house!’
It was but the work of a moment for him to take the names of the boys who were present.