XXII — KAY'S CHANGES ITS NAME
For the remaining weeks of the winter term, things went as smoothly in Kay's as Kay would let them. That restless gentleman still continued to burst in on Kennedy from time to time with some sensational story of how he had found a fag doing what he ought not to have done. But there was a world of difference between the effect these visits had now and that which they had had when Kennedy had stood alone in the house, his hand against all men. Now that he could work off the effects of such encounters by going straight to Fenn's study and picking the house-master to pieces, the latter's peculiar methods ceased to be irritating, and became funny. Mr Kay was always ferreting out the weirdest misdoings on the part of the members of his house, and rushing to Kennedy's study to tell him about them at full length, like a rather indignant dog bringing a rat he has hunted down into a drawing-room, to display it to the company. On one occasion, when Fenn and Jimmy Silver were in Kennedy's study, Mr Kay dashed in to complain bitterly that he had discovered that the junior dayroom kept mice in their lockers. Apparently this fact seemed to him enough to cause an epidemic of typhoid fever in the place, and he hauled Kennedy over the coals, in a speech that lasted five minutes, for not having detected this plague-spot in the house.
"So that's the celebrity at home, is it?" said Jimmy Silver, when he had gone. "I now begin to understand more or less why this house wants a new Head every two terms. Is he often taken like that?"
"He's never anything else," said Kennedy. "Fenn keeps a list of the things he rags me about, and we have an even shilling on, each week, that he will beat the record of the previous week. At first I used to get the shilling if he lowered the record; but after a bit it struck us that it wasn't fair, so now we take it on alternate weeks. This is my week, by the way. I think I can trouble you for that bob, Fenn?"
"I wish I could make it more," said Fenn, handing over the shilling.
"What sort of things does he rag you about generally?" inquired Silver.
Fenn produced a slip of paper.
"Here are a few," he said, "for this month. He came in on the 10th because he found two kids fighting. Kennedy was down town when it happened, but that made no difference. Then he caught the senior dayroom making a row of some sort. He said it was perfectly deafening; but we couldn't hear it in our studies. I believe he goes round the house, listening at keyholes. That was on the 16th. On the 22nd he found a chap in Kennedy's dormitory wandering about the house at one in the morning. He seemed to think that Kennedy ought to have sat up all night on the chance of somebody cutting out of the dormitory. At any rate, he ragged him. I won the weekly shilling on that; and deserved it, too."
Fenn had to go over to the gymnasium shortly after this. Jimmy Silver stayed on, talking to Kennedy.