“Then come at once, Jones iv., and collect them again, every one, and write out two hundred lines. Let dinner proceed now.”
If the object of the promoters of the Philosophical Conversation Club had been cheap advertisement, they must have been amply gratified. Hercules never performed any labour equal to mine that afternoon. The masters handed me up their copies gravely and reproachfully; but the Low Heathens generally made sport of my misery. Scarcely one in ten would part with his rare broadside, and those who did made it manifest that they had the contents by heart. The unfortunate “misprint” of my Christian name, moreover, was the occasion for much ribald comment.
When, finally, I reached the quarters of my own particular comrades, I received more kicks than papers. They were unkind enough to say I had mulled the whole thing, and to promise me untold penalties when they got me in the privacy of the faggery.
At last, when the pudding was almost vanishing, I sat down to my hard-earned meal. But it mattered little, for I could have eaten nothing.
Be that as it may, the Philosophical Conversation Club was able to boast that afternoon that it had attracted the attention and interest of every member of the school, from the headmaster down to the junior fag. And few school clubs can boast as much as that!
Chapter Twelve.
A Committee of Ways and Means.
“Where are you going?” demanded the faggery next afternoon, as I tried to desert them after afternoon chapel. “To take up your lines to England?”