“Oh, I’ve got one—a beauty—young Trimble; he sat next to you at register to-day. You’ll hit it off with him to a T. Talking of tea, by the way, it’s time we showed up at Pridgin’s. Come along, and I’ll introduce you.”
The reader may not believe it, but my interview with Tempest helped to knock the nonsense out of me more than any treatment I had yet undergone. It was not so much the caning (which, by the way, I afterwards discovered to be a wholly unauthorised proceeding on my old comrade’s part), but his plain advice, and the friendly way in which it was all given. It made me realise that he really meant to stick by me and pull me through my troubles, and the sense of his interest in me made up wonderfully for the loneliness which had been growing on me ever since I entered Low Heath that morning.
Pridgin, as became a member of the Eleven, received me with dignity quite devoid of curiosity. He informed Tempest that he considered it was playing it pretty low down on him to let an idiot like me loose on him. Still, times were bad, and one must put up with what one could get.
Whereat I had the good sense to grin appreciatively, and was thereupon permitted to boil my new master’s eggs and stand by the kettle until it was ready for the tea.
Chapter Nine.
Acquaintances, High and Low.
I was at first too much concerned in my important culinary occupations to bestow much attention on the company. It was only when the eggs were boiled and the teapot filled that I had leisure to make a few observations.
The host, Pridgin, my new master, was not a very formidable sort of person at first blush. True he was in the Eleven and a fine all-round athlete. True he was fairly well up in the Sixth, and one of the boys Low Heath was proud of. These things did not strike one in beholding him. What did strike one was his air of lazy humour, which seemed to regard life as a huge joke, if only one could summon up the energy to enjoy it. Pridgin did indeed enjoy his share of it, but one could not help feeling that, were he to choose, that share would be a great deal larger than it really was.