“A Liberal, ma’am,” replied Riddell. “Oh! boys are generally Conservatives, are they not?” She asked this question in a tone as if she expected him to try to deceive her in his answer. However, he evaded it by replying bashfully, “I hope not.”
“And pray,” said Miss Stringer, putting down her cup, and turning full on her victim, “will you favour us with your reasons for such a hope, Mr Riddell?”
Poor Riddell! he little thought what he had let himself in for. If there was one subject the two ladies were rabid on it was politics. They proceeded to pounce upon, devour, and annihilate the unlucky head classic without mercy. They made him contradict himself twice or thrice in every sentence; they proved to him clearly that he knew nothing at all of what he was talking about, and generally gave him to understand that he was an impertinent, conceited puppy for presuming to have an opinion of his own on such matters!
Riddell came out of the ordeal very much as a duck comes out of the hands of the poulterer. Luckily, by the time the discussion was over it was time for him to go. He certainly could not have held out much longer. As it was, he was good for nothing after it, and went to bed early that night with a very bad headache.
Before he left, however, the doctor had accompanied him into the hall, and said, “There are a few things, Riddell, I want to speak to you about. Will you come to my study a quarter of an hour before morning chapel to-morrow?”
Had the invitation been to breakfast in that horrible parlour Riddell would flatly have declined it. As it was he cheerfully accepted it, and only wished the doctor had thought of it before, and spared him the misery of that evening with the two Willoughby griffins!
He could hardly help guessing what it was the doctor had to say to him, or why it was he had been asked to tea that evening. And he felt very dejected as he thought about it. Like most of the other Willoughbites, the idea of a new captain having to be appointed had never occurred to him till Wyndham had finally left the school. And when it did occur, and when moreover it began to dawn upon him that he himself was the probable successor, horror filled his mind. He couldn’t do it. He was not cut out for it. He would sooner leave Willoughby altogether. The boys either knew nothing about him, or they laughed at him for his clumsiness, or they suspected him as a coward, or they despised him as a prig. He had wit enough to know what Willoughby thought of him, and that being so, how could he ever be its captain?
“I would much rather you named some one else,” said he to the doctor at their interview next morning. “I know quite well I couldn’t get on.”
“You have not tried yet,” said the doctor.
“But I’ve not the strength, and the boys don’t like me,” pleaded Riddell.