Chapter Seventeen.
The Doctor among the Guinea-Pigs.
The Dominican appeared once more before the holidays, and, as might have been expected (besides its usual articles at the expense of the Sixth Form), made itself particularly merry over the rebellion of the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles.
Pembury was not the fellow to give quarter in his own particular line of attack; and it must be confessed he had the proud satisfaction of making his unfortunate young victims smart.
The “leading article” of the present number bore the suggestive title, “Thank Goodness!” and began as follows:
“Thank goodness, we are at last rid of the pest which has made Saint Dominic’s hideous for months past! At a single blow, with a single clap of the hands, we have sent Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles packing, and can now breathe pure air. No longer shall we have to put up with the plague. We are to be spared the disgust of seeing them, much more of talking to them or hearing their hideous voices. No longer will our morning milk be burned; no longer will our herrings be grilled to cinders; no longer will our jam be purloined; no longer will our books and door-handles be made abominable by contact with their filthy hands! Thank goodness! The Doctor never did a more patriotic deed than this! The small animals are in future to be kept to their own quarters, and will be forbidden the liberty they have so long abused of mixing with their betters. It is as well for all parties; and if any event could have brightened the last days of this term, it is this—” and so on.
Before this manifesto, a swarm of youngsters puzzled on the day of publication with no little bewilderment and fury. They had refused to allow any of their number to act as policeman, and had secretly been making merry over the embarrassment of their late persecutors, and wondering whatever they would be able to say for their humiliated selves in the Dominican—and lo! here was an article which, if it meant anything, meant that the heroic rebellion of the juniors was regarded not with dismay, but with positive triumph, by the very fellows it had been intended to “squash!”
“What does it mean, Padger?” asked Bramble, who, never much of a scholar, was quite unable to master the meaning of this.
“It’s all a pack of crams,” replied Padger, not quite sure of the sense himself.