“O Jotty, you dog
Your house we well know
Is headquarters of prog——”
the purport of which was to fix on him the stigma of inviting a friend to dine, and regaling him with a black-pudding only.
Lashed to fury, he burst into the Grammar School when the first and second-form boys were assembled in the afternoon to rehearse the speeches which, according to custom, they were to deliver in public at the annual commemoration in October. He braved them in his hottest style, winding up with, “You are a set of blockheads! I would not come to hear your speeches if you would pay me for it!”
There was a general cry, “Turn him out! Turn him out!” But Jotty would not be turned out. He stuck himself in the doorway with his legs against the door-post, and his back against the door itself, to the extreme risk of broken limbs, whilst his young and vigorous opponents brought their strength to bear upon the door to force him out.
With such odds he was sure to be overcome; but, driven into the yard, he fought with his antagonists like a mastiff at bay, and they, like the cowards they must have been, to have assailed in a body an old man (under any provocation), by sheer force of numbers, bore him backwards to the wall, and, but for the opportune arrival of Dr. Smith, would have repeated the outrage perpetrated on Jabez Clegg eight years before.
He might well say Dr. Smith had saved his life. Such a fall, whether in high or low water, to so old a man, would have been certain destruction. They broke his heart, I think, if they did not break his limbs, for he never was the same man afterwards. Even old Mrs. Clowes used to rally him on his frequent “fits of the dumps.”
Whether Jabez and Ben Travis had, or had not, lost sight of the Parson’s homily, they were linked arm in arm, the rich yeomanry officer and the unpretending smallware-salesman, just as, nearly nine years previously, the big, raw-boned youth, with a heart large enough to match his frame, had linked his arm in that of the poor Blue-coat boy, as a friend and protector, when as yet his admittance into society was undreamed of.