Orville College: A Story

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Thank you," said Trace, half in allusion to the wish, half ironically. "I suppose I may go in now."

"Yes," said Mr. Henry, "that is all. Good night, Trace."

He went out at the great gates as he spoke. But Trace, instead of hastening in to his studies, that he seemed so anxious over, came to the conclusion to delay them yet a little longer. He had a mind to track Mr. Henry.

Following him at a safe distance, keeping under cover of any bit of shade cast by the moon, he saw him pass the front of the college, and make for some houses round by the shops. Mr. Henry was looking about him as if uncertain of his geography; finally he paused before a row of small "genteel" dwellings, and entered one of them.

"Number five!" exclaimed Trace, taking his observations. "I'm blest if that's not the place where the Paradynes live!" he continued with sudden conviction, for he had been gathering a little information for himself in the course of the afternoon. "A nice lot to know! Birds of a feather. I shouldn't wonder but he had a share of the spoil in Liverpool! He confesses to having known them well. If ever a fire brand came into a school, it's this same German master. I'll look after him a bit."

And, having so far set operations afloat, Mr. Trace galloped back to school as fast as his legs would carry him.

Skirting the playground at the back of the college, nearly opposite the large bay window of the master's study, and of the boys' dormitories above it, was a small dwelling-house of rough stone, known amidst the boys as "Mother Butter's." Mother Butter, a tall spare angular lady of fifty, kept a cow and a donkey, and a good many fowls. She sold a little butter, she sold poultry and fresh eggs; she sold choice herbs, mushroom ketchup; lavender, and other sweet dried flowers to scent drawers. Formerly she used to make "bullseyes" for the junior college boys; small square delectable tablets, composed of butter, treacle, and peppermint, and did in this a roaring trade. But differences arose, beginning at first with long credit, and going on to open rupture, and one day last term she flung her treacle saucepan amidst the crew, vowing she would make no more. The saucepan struck Gall's trencher, denting it in and blackening his ear, nearly stunning him besides. Smarting under the infliction, he issued on the spot a general order that no more bullseyes were to be consumed of Mother Butter's, though she "made them till she was blue." Since then there had been open and perpetual warfare. Mrs. Butter carried tales of them to the masters: the boys entered on a system of petty annoyance: their palates suffering under the deprivation of those choice sweetmeats, it was not likely they would spare her. They painted her cow green; they cut off the plume of a handsome cock, the pride of the whole poultry; they tied a bell to the donkey's tail when it was charged with two panniers of eggs, thereby causing the startled animal to smash the lot; and they laid a huge tin plate across the top of her low kitchen chimney. Nearly all these miseries were securely effected at night; and as Mrs. Butter watched vigilantly and detected nothing, her surprise equalled her rage. Dr. Brabazon had levied a contribution for the value of the eggs; but that did not stop the fun.

It was a pretty place to look at, this dwelling-house of Mrs. Butter's, with the clematis on its stone walls, the bright flowers before it, and the little paddock behind; and it so happened that Mr. Henry, seeking for lodgings, heard there were some to let here. He found a neat plain sitting-room, and a closet opening from it which just held the bed and washhand stand, with space for his portmanteau, if he put the chair out. Mrs. Butter said she would cook and wait upon him; the rent asked was low, and he made the bargain, unconscious man, offhand. The previous occupant had been an outdoor servant of the college, and you may imagine the effect Mr. Henry's choice produced on the school. Not until he moved into it was he aware of the contemptuous feeling it excited, and then not of its extent. "It suits me," said he, quietly and decisively.

He saw no reason why it should not suit him. It had been done up nicely afresh, and was convenient for the college. He might have thought it good enough, even though he had not been obliged to look at every sixpence that he spent. The boys might have thought it good enough, but for its being in the house of the obnoxious Mother Butter, and for a servant's previous occupation of it.

You know the old saying, my friends: "One man must not look at a horse, while another may leap over the hedge." Just so was it here. Had somebody great and grand—a duke, let us say, for example—taken a fancy to that room, and come and occupied it, the boys would have been seized with a sudden sense of its desirability as a lodging, had its photograph taken as a model of beauty, and extolled it abroad; they might even have relaxed a little in their polite attentions to Mother Butter; but as one whom they were half-way prepared to regard as an enemy entered upon it, the case was different. In truth, a strong feeling, independent of this, was setting in against the foreign master.