BY PAUL BLAKE.
ERRY was a boy of many characteristics. The most notable were an amazing love of sleep and a desperate activity when awake. He seemed to lay in a fresh stock of energy every time he had a nap, and although the most difficult boy in the world to waken, when he was awake he was irrepressible.
It was winter. Berry found that season of the year did not agree with his constitution.
“This getting up in the middle of the night is killing me,” he remarked one day to a group of sympathizers. He had the whole school on his side in this particular matter, for work before breakfast in winter was decidedly unpopular. At half-past seven every boy had to be at his desk “putting in” an hour at mathematics before prayers and breakfast.
It was pitch dark at seven, when the big bell rang as a signal to rise. It is curious how difficult it was to hear that bell in winter. Berry never heard it, or rather never heeded it. He scorned to rise till twenty minutes past seven. He could “do it,” as he termed dressing, in ten minutes, and had been known to do it in five. On such occasions his personal ablutions were apt to be rather neglected.
“That old bell is at the bottom of it,” remarked Culverwell, another boy, who found that the heavy clang disturbed his slumbers.
“It’s John who’s at the bottom of the bell,” put in Millward.