This talk had been a fortnight ago. Since then the examinations had come and gone. The Philosophers, sobered and perspiring, had been spread out at two-desk intervals on three fatal days in the large hall, with day boys to right of them and Selkirkers to left, writing for their lives, and groaning over questions which only a fiend could have devised, and only a double-first could have answered. How I had got on, I could no more tell than the man in the moon. My comrades, when we compared notes afterwards, cheerfully assured me that, out of some fifty questions on the three days, I had possibly got half a question right, but that that was doubtful, and depended on the particular crib the examiner swore by. Redwood, to whom I confided some of my answers, thought rather more hopefully of my case, and told me to keep my spirits up. Tempest said that if he were to cuff me for every discreditable blunder I had made, I should have ear-ache for a month. Dicky, on the other hand, confessed that he wished he could believe he had done as well as I.
As for the other Philosophers, general discouragement was the order of the day. It was moved and seconded that Coxhead be kicked for having made “amnis” feminine, and having translated the French “impasse” as “instep.” And Trimble was temporarily suspended from the service of the Conversation Club because he had put a decimal dot in the wrong place. Public feeling ran so high that any departure from the rules of syntax or algebra was regarded as treason against the house, and dealt with accordingly.
On the whole, therefore, we were glad when the time of suspense came to an end.
How matters had gone with the seniors it was even more difficult to surmise than it had been in our case. The day after the end of their exams., Redwood and Tempest, with Pridgin to cox, rowed twelve miles down stream and back, and returned cheerful and serene, and even jocular. Leslie of Selkirk’s also spent a pleasant afternoon in the school laboratory, whistling to himself as he mixed up his acids. Crofter and Wales mooned about under the trees in the field somewhat limply, but showed no outward signs of distress. Altogether, speculation was baffled, and it was almost irritating to find the chief actors in the drama refusing to take the momentous question seriously.
“How did you get on?” I asked Tempest.
“You’ll hear to-morrow,” said he; “so shall I.”
“Do you think you’ll beat Leslie?”
“Either that, or he’ll beat me, or it’ll be a dead heat,” said he.
There was no dealing with frivolity of this kind; and Tempest, ever since his recovery last term, had been rapidly regaining all his old frivolity and lightheartedness.
It was a trying ordeal on “Result” day, sitting patiently in hall till the doctor made up his mind to appear. All the school was there. There was an unusual spirit of orderliness afoot. The few irresponsible ones, who, with nothing to lose, tried to get up a disturbance, were promptly squashed by the grim, anxious competitors to whom the coming results meant so much. We Philosophers huddled together for comfort, but not a joke travelled down the line. We sat and drummed our fingers on the desk before us, and wondered why on earth the doctor, on a day like this, should take such an unearthly time to put on his cap and gown.