Naturally his companions, including Peter, get lines for disturbing the placidity of “prep” with their unseemly giggles. And George, when he sweeps up the schoolroom next morning, may be heard to mutter:
“Wherever all this ’air do come from passes me!”
Tod’s real name is Percy—he is called after a wealthy and aristocratic relative—but he refuses point-blank to answer to it, for he fancies that it savours of those “eeny peeny” children in “Home Influence,” a work that earned their undying hatred when it was read aloud to them by a well-intentioned but mistaken aunt while they were recovering from measles.
On the occasion of its holocaust, before referred to, their mother, passing the study, and struck by the unwonted stillness reigning therein, opened the door softly and looked in. Both boys were stooping over the fireplace and prodding a solid yet feathery mass that glowed and gloomed in the heart of the embers.
“There goes Herbert, ‘the almost-angel boy,’ and ‘haughty Caroline,’ and ‘playful Emmiline,’” whispered Tod, poking viciously. While Peter, quoting from “Thrawn Janet,” added in an awful voice:
“Witch, beldame, devil! I charge you, by the power of God, begone—if you be dead, to the grave—if you be damned, to hell.”
I regret to say that their mother’s sense of humor is stronger than her dislike of strong language, and that she stole away to laugh, leaving the conspirators unrebuked for the moment. But they did their “prep.” at school henceforth.
Peter’s manner is singularly misleading in its frank sincerity, and he will on occasion answer a sudden question in a way which is, to say the least of it, bewildering to his interlocutor.
For instance, one day in the football-field a new master asked him the name of a small boy some distance off who was “slacking” abominably.
“Who’s that chap with the red hair by the goal posts?” he said to Peter, who had been somewhat officiously putting him right on several points.