Chapter Two.
Lamb’s Singing.
Wakefield’s house, as Fisher minor entered it under his brother’s wing, hardly seemed to the new boy as disreputable a haunt as his recent Modern friend had led him to expect. Nor did the sixty or seventy fellows who clustered in the common room strike him as exactly the lowest stratum of Fellsgarth society. Yorke, the captain, for instance, with his serene, well-cut face, his broad shoulders and impressive voice hardly answered to the description of a lout. Nor did Ranger, of the long legs, with speed written in every inch of his athletic figure, and gentleman in every line of his face, look the sort of fellow to be mistaken for a cad. Even Fisher major, about whom the younger brother had been made to feel decided qualms, could hardly have been the hail-fellow-well-met he was with everybody, had he been all the new boy’s informant had recently described him.
Indeed, Fisher minor, when presently he gathered himself together sufficiently to look round him, was surprised to see so few traces of the “casual-ward” in his new house. True, most of the fellows might be poor—which, of course, was highly reprehensible; and some of them might not be connected with the nobility, which showed a great lack of proper feeling on their part. But as a rule they held up their heads and seemed to think very well of themselves and one another; while their dress, if it was not in every case as fashionable as that of the temporary owner of Fisher minor’s half-crown, was at least passably well fitting.
Fisher minor, for all his doubts about the company he was in, could not help half envying these fellows, as he saw with what glee and self-satisfaction they entered into their own at Wakefield’s. They were all so glad to be back, to see again the picture of Cain and Abel on the wall, to scramble for the corner seat in the ingle-bench, to hear the well-known creak on the middle landing, to catch the imperturbable tick of the dormitory clock, to see the top of Hawk’s Pike looming out, down the valley, clear and sharp in the falling light.
Fisher minor and Ashby, as they sat dismally and watched all the fun, wondered if the time would ever come when they would feel as much at home as all this. It was a stretch of imagination beyond their present capacity.
To their alarm, Master Wally Wheatfield presently recognised them from across the room, and came over patronisingly to where they sat.
“Hullo, new kids! thinking of your mas, and the rocking-horses, and Nurse Jane, and all that? Never mind, have a good blub, it’ll do you good.”
Considering how near, in strict secrecy, both the young gentlemen addressed were to the condition indicated by the genial twin, this exhortation was not exactly kind.