“I suppose I should be now languishing in Bideford jail, shouldn’t I? Well, to quote the Head, in a little business which we have agreed to forget, that strikes me as flagrant injustice... What are you laughing at, you young sinners? Isn’t it true? I will not stay to be shouted at. What I looked into this den of iniquity for was to find out if any one cared to come down for a bathe off the Ridge. But I see you won’t.”
“Won’t we, though! Half a shake, Padre Sahib, till we get our towels, and nous sommes avec vous!”
A LITTLE PREP.
Easter term was but a month old when Stettson major, a day-boy, contracted diphtheria, and the Head was very angry. He decreed a new and narrower set of bounds—the infection had been traced to an out-lying farmhouse—urged the prefects severely to lick all trespassers, and promised extra attentions from his own hand. There were no words bad enough for Stettson major, quarantined at his mother’s house, who had lowered the school-average of health. This he said in the gymnasium after prayers. Then he wrote some two hundred letters to as many anxious parents and guardians, and bade the school carry on. The trouble did not spread, but, one night, a dog-cart drove to the Head’s door, and in the morning the Head had gone, leaving all things in charge of Mr. King, senior house-master. The Head often ran up to town, where the school devoutly believed he bribed officials for early proofs of the Army Examination papers; but this absence was unusually prolonged.
“Downy old bird!” said Stalky to the allies one wet afternoon in the study. “He must have gone on a bend and been locked up under a false name.”
“What for?” Beetle entered joyously into the libel.
“Forty shillin’s or a month for hackin’ the chucker-out of the Pavvy on the shins. Bates always has a spree when he goes to town. Wish he was back, though. I’m about sick o’ King’s ‘whips an’ scorpions’ an’ lectures on public-school spirit—yah!—and scholarship!”
“‘Crass an’ materialized brutality of the middle-classes—readin’ solely for marks. Not a scholar in the whole school,’” McTurk quoted, pensively boring holes in the mantel-piece with a hot poker.
“That’s rather a sickly way of spending an afternoon. Stinks too. Let’s come out an’ smoke. Here’s a treat.” Stalky held up a long Indian cheroot. “’Bagged it from my pater last holidays. I’m a bit shy of it though; it’s heftier than a pipe. We’ll smoke it palaver-fashion. Hand it round, eh? Let’s lie up behind the old harrow on the Monkey-farm Road.”