Chapter Sixteen.
Guinea-Pigs and Tadpoles on Strike.
If anything had been required to make the “strike” of the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles a serious matter, the “affair of Greenfield senior’s right foot” undoubtedly had that effect. The éclat which that heroic exploit lent to the mutiny was simply marvellous. The story was told with fifty exaggerations all over the school. One report said that the whole body of the monitors had besieged the Fourth Junior door, and had been repulsed with heavy slaughter. Another declared that Oliver had been captured by the fags, and branded on the soles of his feet with a G and a T, to commemorate the emancipation of the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles; and a third veracious narrative went so far as to say that the Upper Fifth and several members of the Sixth had humbly come and begged forgiveness for their past misdeeds, and were henceforth to become the fags of their late victims.
True or untrue as these stories were, any amount of glory accompanied the beginning of the strike, and there was sufficient sense of common danger to unite the youngsters in very close bonds. You rarely caught a Guinea-pig or a Tadpole alone now; they walked about in dozens, and were very wide awake. They assembled on every possible occasion in their room, and fortified their door with chairs and desks, and their zeal with fiery orations and excited conjurations. One wretched youth who the first evening had been weak enough to poke his master’s fire, was expelled ignominiously from the community, and for a week afterwards lived the life of an outcast in Saint Dominic’s. The youngsters were in earnest, and no mistake. Stephen Greenfield, as was only natural, did not altogether find cause for exultation over the event which led to the strike. For a whole day he was very angry on his brother’s account, and threatened to stand aloof from the revolution altogether; but when it was explained to him this would lead to a general “smash-up” of the strike, and when it was further explained that the fellows who caught hold of his big brother’s right foot couldn’t possibly be expected to know to whom that foot belonged, he relented, and entered as enthusiastically as any one into the business. Indeed, if all the rebels had been like Stephen, the fags at Saint Dominic’s would be on strike to this day. He contemplated martyrdom with the utmost equanimity, and the Inquisition itself never saw a more determined victim.
The morning after the famous “cricket feast” gave him his first opportunity of sacrificing himself for the good of his country. Loman met him in the passage after first-class.
“Why didn’t you turn up and get my breakfast, you idle young vagabond?” inquired the Sixth Form boy, half good-humouredly, and little guessing what was in the wind. “I’m not idle,” said Stephen.
“Then what do you mean by not doing your work?”
“It’s not my work.”
Loman opened his eyes in amazement, and stared at this bold young hero as if he had dropped from the clouds. “What!” he cried; “what do you say?”