Sometimes he would get her to repeat lines after him. She might make a feeble attempt to remonstrate with him, but saw that her humorous efforts made him so beam with delight, that awkwardly, with an entirely false distribution of accents and meanings, she stammered out her lines. It was "Arethusa" finally brought this diversion to an end.
"From her couch of snows," said Philip. She made an effort to imitate him.
"In the Acroceraunian mountains."
"In de Ac—ac—ac ... It cannot be, Feivel. I can't!"
"In the Ac—ro—ce—rau—nian mountains."
"Ac—roc—Ac—roc—roc— No, Feivel, my teeth! Tell me all the rest thyself, I will listen; it will be better so! I cannot thy croc—croc!"
When at last the feet of Reb Monash were heard in the bedroom overhead, the poetry séance came abruptly to an end. Mrs. Massel turned to the fire to put on the kettle for his pre-chayder tea. Philip regretfully hid away his poet and turned to the intricacies of algebra.
Schoolboys have an unerring instinct for the presence or absence of what at Doomington School was called "public spirit." It was in fact so essential a part of the non-material composition of the school that the lists of forms which were drawn up terminally, a little invidiously distinguished with an asterisk those hearts where "public spirit" was a constant flame.
Philip, though his first year was well advanced, still came to school somewhat as a stranger. While he himself anticipated little the vehement passion which would some day absorb him into the fabric of the school, his form mates anticipated it far less. So that the cold disregard for Philip general in the form was in certain boys concentrated into active persecution, and in Jeremy Higson, into an attitude mournfully reminiscent of the Babylonian Kossacken. The spirit was similar but the methods differed vitally. Higson might be standing loosely against a desk when Philip entered the room after the luncheon interval. A nail-studded boot would sweep like Jove's bolt from the void into Philip's rear. But turning towards Higson, Philip would find only a heavy-faced youth talking sleepily with his friends. Higson senior was a mild Episcopalian gentleman who had written sixteen pamphlets to prove the identity of the Anglo-Saxons, including the Higsons senior and junior, with the Lost Tribes. For some perverse reason Higson junior was exceedingly antipathetic to the Found Tribes, when, to be logical, it was for Higson junior to rush forward in consanguineous ecstasy to kiss Philip on the forehead and to repudiate his principal friend, Evan Evans, an indisputable Celt, as an outlander, an unsanctified.
"Where was Moses when the light went out?" he jeered with criminal disrespect. "Who killed Christ?" he insisted frequently, turning towards Philip an eye so baleful that it was evident he considered Philip an actual participant in the crucifixion.