“Were they all right?”
“Yes. Splendid.”
“Good,” said Renford.
Barry’s friend Drummond was one of those who had visited the scene of the disaster early, before Mill’s energetic hand had repaired the damage done, and his narrative was consequently in some demand.
“The place was in a frightful muck,” he said. “Everything smashed except the table; and ink all over the place. Whoever did it must have been fairly sick with him, or he’d never have taken the trouble to do it so thoroughly. Made a fair old hash of things, didn’t he, Bertie?”
“Bertie” was the form in which the school elected to serve up the name of De Bertini. Raoul de Bertini was a French boy who had come to Wrykyn in the previous term. Drummond’s father had met his father in Paris, and Drummond was supposed to be looking after Bertie. They shared a study together. Bertie could not speak much English, and what he did speak was, like Mill’s furniture, badly broken.
“Pardon?” he said.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Drummond, “it wasn’t anything important. I was only appealing to you for corroborative detail to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative.”
Bertie grinned politely. He always grinned when he was not quite equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation. As a consequence of which, he was generally, like Mrs Fezziwig, one vast, substantial smile.
“I never liked Mill much,” said Barry, “but I think it’s rather bad luck on the man.”