But the blood was up between Fifth and Sixth, and each Form looked forward to the match, Sixth versus School, with redoubled interest.
“Were not these boys fools?” some one asks.
To be sure they were, sir. But what of that? they were none the less boys, and most of them fine young fellows, too, with all their nonsense.
However, as has been said, all this came out of the circumstances which attended the bringing out of the first number of the Dominican, and there seemed but a poor look-out for Number 2, which was now nearly due, in consequence.
“What on earth am I to do?” asked Pembury of Tom Senior one day; “I’ve not got a single contribution yet. There’s you making out you’re too busy, and Rick the same. It’s all humbug, I know! What are you busy at I’d like to know? I never saw you busy yet.”
“Upon my word, old man,” said Tom, “I’m awfully sorry, but I’ve got a tremendous lot to do. I’m going to try for the French prize; I am, really.”
“And you’ll get it, too; rather! Wasn’t it you who translated ‘I know the way to write’ into ‘Je non le chemin a writer’ eh? Oh, stick to French by all means, Tom; it’s in your line! But you might just as well write for Number 2.”
“I really can’t this time,” said Tom.
Ricketts had an excuse very similar. Bullinger had hurt his foot, he said, and could not possibly write; and Braddy had begun to study fossils, he said, and was bound to devote all his spare time to them. To all of whom Master Pembury gave a piece of his mind.
“Wray, old man,” said he, that evening, “you and Noll and I shall have to do the whole thing between us, that’s all about it.”