“No, ’tisn’t,” said Beetle. “‘When ‘Molly’ Fairburn had attended to me for an hour or so I used to go bung off to sleep on a form sometimes. Poor devil! But he called me a beastly poet, though.”
“Well, come on.” Stalky lowered his voice. “Good-by, Campbell. ’Member, if you don’t talk, nobody will.”
There should have been a war-dance, but that all three were so utterly tired that they almost went to sleep above the tea-cups in their study, and slept till prep.
“A most extraordinary letter. Are all parents incurably mad? What do you make of it?” said the Head, handing a closely written eight pages to the Reverend John.
“‘The only son of his mother, and she a widow.’ That is the least reasonable sort.” The chaplain read with pursed lips. “If half those charges are true he should be in the sick-house; whereas he is disgustingly well. Certainly he has shaved. I noticed that.”
“Under compulsion, as his mother points out. How delicious! How salutary!”
“You haven’t to answer her. It isn’t often I don’t know what has happened in the school; but this is beyond me.”
“If you asked me I should say seek not to propitiate. When one is forced to take crammers’ pups—”
“He was perfectly well at extra-tuition—with me—this morning,” said the Head, absently. “Unusually well behaved, too.”
“—they either educate the school, or the school, as in this case, educates them. I prefer our own methods,” the chaplain concluded.