“Me, sir!” exclaimed Edwards, turning pale; “what for, sir?”
“Doctor Jolliffe does not flog for many things, but there are certain offences he never fails to visit with the utmost severity. Smoking is one of them.”
“I assure you, sir, I have not—”
“Lying is another, so do not finish your sentence. I can smell the stale tobacco.”
And indeed Edwards was wearing the jacket in which he had indulged in that emetical luxury, his first cigar, two evenings previously.
“But really, sir, it is no lie,” he urged; “I have not been smoking, and I cannot tell where the smell comes from, unless it is my jacket, which I wore in the holidays, when I sat in the room with my father when he was having his cigar sometimes, and which has been in my box till the other day. I am certain it cannot be my breath or anything else.”
“Come nearer; no, your breath and hair are free from the taint. Well, it may be as you say, and I am loth to suspect you of falsehood. But listen to me, my boy; I am not assuming that you have been smoking, mind, but only, as we are on the subject, that you might do so. It may seem very arbitrary that the rules against it are so very severe, considering how general the practice is, but they are wise for all that. However harmless it may be for those who have come to their full growth, smoking tobacco is certainly very injurious to lads who are not matured. And indeed until the habit is acquired—it affects the digestion and the memory of every one. Now, in these days of competitive examinations, when every young fellow on entering life has to struggle to get his foot on the first rung of the ladder, and all his future prospects depend on his doing better than others, how inexpressibly silly it is for him to handicap himself needlessly by taking a narcotic which confuses his brain and impairs his memory, and which affords him no pleasure whatever. I treat you as a rational being, and appeal to your common sense, and speak as your friend. Now, go.”
Edwards was not such a ready liar as you may think him, though he certainly prevaricated. He had worn that jacket in his father’s smoking-room, and it had lain in his box during the early part of the term. He had not smoked again since the occasion commemorated, and that was two days previously, and he persuaded himself that his tutor’s question applied to that day. But he knew in his heart that it didn’t, and with the kind tones of his tutor’s voice ringing in his ears he felt as if he ought to be kicked.
But when he went up to his room he found Saurin there, and any feelings of self-reproach he had had soon melted away.
“What’s up, now?” asked his friend. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”