There was something very mysterious about the manner in which Fergus uttered these words, and we listened for what was to come almost as breathlessly as Jim Sparrow.
“It was early in this century,” he said, “that a boy came to this school called Bubbles. No one knew where he came from. He had no parents, and never went home for the holidays. He was about your age, Sparrow, and just your build, and he was in the Lower Fourth.”
“I’m going to be moved up this Christmas,” interposed Jim hurriedly.
“Are you? So was Bubbles going to be moved up when what I’m going to tell you happened!”
It was getting dark, and for the last, few minutes all the light in the room had been caused by a jet of gas in the coals. That jet now went out suddenly, leaving us in nearly total darkness.
“It was a Christmas Eve. Everybody else had gone home for the holidays, and Bubbles was the only boy left in the school—Bubbles and a master whose name I won’t mention.”
“He was the Detention Master, wasn’t he?” inquired Lamb’s voice.
“Ah, yes. There’s no harm in telling you that. Bubbles and the Detention Master were left all alone at Ferriby, Sparrow.”
“Ye—es,” said Sparrow softly, and making two syllables of the word.
“They’d had no hampers sent them, and as they sat round the fire that evening they knew both of them there was no Christmas dinner in the house. They had neither of them tasted food for some days, and had no money to buy any, and if they had had, the snow was too deep to get anywhere. They had tried making soup out of copybook covers, but it wasn’t nourishing, and the soles of their boots which they tried to eat didn’t sit well on their stomachs.”