Foxholme Hall, and Other Tales

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“Well done! well done! Famously hit! Bravo! Pitch into him, little one!” were the exclamations over and over again repeated by his friends; while the opposite party kept shouting, “Go it, Cicester!—Give it him soundly!—Hit him hard!” Cirencester, however, did not seem to be very successful in putting this advice into execution, and impartial observers were of opinion that Warrender was getting the best of it, when the cry was raised of “All up—all up!” and the masters were seen coming out of the Doctor’s door. After stopping a minute to have a short chat together, they proceeded to the school.

The moment the masters appeared, the combatants were separated, and Cirencester drew off without making any remark. The delay enabled Reginald to arrange his neck-tie, smooth his hair, and shake himself into his jacket. He felt rather bruised and heated, but he bore fortunately no remarkable outward traces of his combat. He soon rejoined Mr Lindsay, who took him to the Doctor, who looked, he thought, benignantly at him, and great was his satisfaction to find that he was placed in the Lower Remove.

From that moment he resolved to show that he had not been wrongly placed. It was a great satisfaction to feel that he should have only to remain a year numbered among those who could be fagged. He was thus also only one division below Power. He found that unless he was “plucked,” he should rise one division every half-year, with certain trials and examinations interposed, into Fifth Form, and so on, but that there was no trial into Sixth Form, the vacancies in it being filled up by seniority.

Power and Anson congratulated him on his successful début in the school-yard.

“Cicester, big as he looks, is below you in the school,” observed Anson. “He is an earl, but we don’t take note here of titles. He eats too much to be strong, and thinks too much of himself to have many real friends. I am very glad that you treated him as you did, because I think that it will sicken him of attacking you again, and make other fellows treat you with respect. Of course, however, there are tuft-hunters here as well as elsewhere, and as some of the Fifth Form are among his friends, you must expect to be fagged a little sharply by them occasionally, if you get in their way. However, you’ll know how to manage to keep out of rows. One thing I have found out; there is no use attempting to shirk fagging. A fellow is always certain to get the worst of it. There is no dodge a fellow can try which the Fifth Form are not up to, because you see that they have tried them all themselves. The worst thing a fellow can do is to show the sulks. He is certain to take nothing by it. I always find it best to do a thing willingly and promptly, however disagreeable it may be.”

Reginald thanked his friends for their advice, and moreover took care to follow it.

The next day, when he went into school, he was found to have prepared his lessons particularly well, and the master looked at him with an approving eye, as a boy likely to do credit to himself, and some little, perhaps, to the school. From the very first Reginald set himself against the use of cribs. He was rather laughed at for this, at first, by his associates, who were aware of what they considered his peculiar crotchet.

“I have just a question to ask you fellows,” he observed one day. “Do you think it right or gentlemanly to tell a lie? Answer me seriously, not in joke.”

It was agreed that a lie was ungentlemanly and wrong.

“Well, is it not equivalent to the telling a lie to pretend to have obtained knowledge in one way, when you have obtained it in another? Is it not the same to take up a copy of verses or an exercise which you did not write, and to pretend that you wrote them? That is one reason why I will not use a crib. I should feel ashamed of myself, and disgraced every time I did so. Another reason is, that we came to school to gain knowledge, to prepare ourselves for college, and for our future course in life, as completely as we can; and the use of cribs prevents our doing this, for though they may enable us to get through a lesson, depend on it a lesson learnt with them is very quickly again forgotten. There is nothing like having to turn over the leaves of a dictionary that we may find a word, to enable us to remember it.”