“Awfully sorry!” said Wraysford; “you’ll have to let me off this time. I’m working like nails for the Nightingale.”
“Bother the Nightingale, I say! What is it to the Dominican? Come, I say, old man, that won’t do! you aren’t going to leave me in the lurch like all the rest?”
But Wraysford was; he would gladly have helped if he could, but he really must not this time; perhaps he would for the next.
Oliver was as bad; he declared the things he had written before—even with Pembury’s assistance—had taken him such ages to do, that he wasn’t going in for the next number. He was very sorry to disappoint, and all that; but if Tony was in for a scholarship next Michaelmas he would understand the reason. Why not let the thing drop this month?
This, however, by no means met Tony’s views. A pretty figure he would cut if it were to be said he couldn’t keep up a paper for two numbers running! No! his mind was made up. Number 2 should come out, even if he wrote every word of it himself! And with that determination he hobbled off to his study. Here he met Simon waiting for him.
“Oh,” said the poet; “I only brought this, if you’ll put it in. I think it’s not bad. I could make it longer if you like. I find poetry comes so easily, you know!”
Tony glanced over the paper and grinned. “Thanks, awfully! This will do capitally; it would spoil it to make it any longer. You’re a brick, Simon! I wish I could write poetry.”
“Oh, never mind. I could do some more bits about other things, you know, if you like.”
Pembury said he didn’t think he should require any more “bits,” but was awfully obliged by this one, which was first-rate, a recommendation which sent Simon away happy to his study, there immediately to compose the opening stanza of his famous epic, “The Sole’s Allegery—a sacred Poem.”
With one contribution in hand, Tony locked his door and sat down to write. There was something out of the common about Pembury. With the body of a cripple he had the heart of a lion, and difficulties only made it more dauntless. Any one else would have thought twice, indeed, before undertaking the task he was now setting himself to do, and ninety-nine out of every hundred would have abandoned it before it was half done. But Tony was indomitable. Every night that week he locked his study-door, and threats and kicks and entreaties would not open it even to his dearest friends. And slowly the huge white sheet before him showed the signs of his diligence. The great long columns, one after another, filled up; paragraph followed paragraph, and article article. He coolly continued the “History of Saint Dominic’s” begun last month by Bullinger, and the “Reports of the Sixth Form Debates” commenced by Tom Senior. And the “Diary of the Sixth Form Mouse” went on just as if Wraysford had never abandoned it; and the poem on the Guinea-pigs, promised in Number 1, by the author of “To a Tadpole,” duly appeared also. Besides this, there were the continuations of Tony’s own articles, and his “Personal Notes,” and “Squeaks from Tadpoleopolis,” and advertisements just as usual; until, in due time, the last column was filled up, the sheet triumphantly fixed in its frame, and as triumphantly hung up on its own particular nails on the wall outside the Fifth Form door.