Chapter Sixteen.“Halt! Right face!”The yellow silk handkerchief was brought a great deal into use by Mr Ramball to dab his head; and once Glyn nudged his schoolfellow’s elbow and suggested that the proprietor was going to cry with disappointment from being told that he was labouring under a very grave mistake.Soon after the two boys slipped away so as to make for the school and excuse themselves for being out of bounds and going out unseen so early in the morning.They “slipped away” at Ramball’s request. “Just walk up and down with me a few times,” he said, “till we get on the other side of the caravans. No, not yet,” he said. “I have sent one of the men for a big basket of carrots. They are nice and sweet, and his highness likes them. Once get him busy on them and he won’t notice you going.”A big two-handled basket made its appearance a few minutes later, piled up with the orange-red vegetables, and carried by a couple of Ramball’s men.“Just give him two or three yourselves, gentlemen,” said the proprietor, “and start him on them. Then get behind him and walk right away straight from his tail. You may do anything of that sort, as I dare say you know, without his seeing. Elephants are very stupid beasts about what goes on behind their backs.”The two boys did as requested, and as soon as the elephant was busy they strolled off with its owner, who was very eager to shake hands with them again and beg of them to come to his place.“Here, I have had enough of this,” cried Glyn as soon as they were out of the great field, “and I never thought of it before. What time is it?”“I don’t know,” said Singh. “I have left my watch on the dressing-table.”Just then the striking of the church clock fell upon their ears, and Singh began to count aloud, while Glyn expressed his belief that it must be seven.“Why, all the chaps will be out when we get back,” he said.“Eight!” said Singh loudly.“Nonsense! You have muddled it,” cried Glyn.“Nine!” cried Singh.“Rubbish!”“It is. Look at the shops all open, and the people about.”“Well; but the time couldn’t have gone like that,” cried Glyn. “Here, what are we going to say? If you are right—why, breakfast’s over ever so long ago, and the fellows are all going in to class. But you can’t be right.”“Well, there’s the clock,” said Singh contemptuously. “Look for yourself.”The hands and Roman numerals of the great church clock had only lately been re-gilded, and they seemed to twinkle and blink and point derisively in the bright morning sunshine.“Oh, I say,” cried Glyn, “who could have thought it! Bother old Ramball and his beasts! Feeding his elephant! I wish somebody would feed me! Why, we shall get no breakfast.”“Oh yes, we shall,” cried Singh confidently. “Why, you forget we are in the infirmary still, and Mrs Hamton won’t let us go without our breakfast. But come along; let’s trot back round by the shortest way.”They started the military double directly, and were about half-way back to the school when, as they turned a corner to get into the main road, a sharp military voice shouted:“Halt! Right face!”“Father!” cried Glyn.“Morning,” cried the Colonel, as he shook hands warmly with both. “You two invalids having your constitutional? Well, you ought to be taken off the sick-list now. I have just been having my walk before breakfast. I came past the Doctor’s, but could not see anything of either of you.”“Going in to breakfast, father?” said Glyn.“Yes, my boy. You had yours at eight o’clock, I suppose. What time were you up? Seven o’clock, I suppose.”“No, father,” said Glyn, laughing. “It must have been about four.”“Four o’clock! What made you get up so soon as that?” cried the Colonel, as he looked from one to the other.“We were called, father, and obliged to get up.” And between them the boys narrated their early morning adventure.“Tut, tut, tut, tut!” ejaculated the Colonel. “Then you have had no breakfast at all?”Singh shook his head.“Come along with me, then,” cried the Colonel. “I’ll soon put that right.”“Can’t, father. We haven’t got leave. We shall be punished for breaking out of school.”“Nonsense!” cried his father. “You didn’t break out of school. You were carried off. Here, I’ll put that right with the Doctor; but there must be no more of this. You lads don’t want elephants till you go back to Dour, and that won’t be for years to come.”Very shortly afterwards the boys were once more seated at the Colonel’s table, to partake of a leisurely breakfast, before he, as he termed it, marched them back like a couple of deserters to the Doctor’s establishment.Wrench looked at them at first wonderingly, and then shook his head as he announced that the boys were all in their classes, and that the Doctor was going round the grounds with the gardener to see what damage was done by the second visit of the elephant; when the Colonel proposed that they should follow and give the boys’ version of their adventure.They came upon him they sought almost directly after, for he had inspected the damaged hedge, and was gazing very ruefully at the broken-down palisade and the torn and trampled flower-beds.He was busy pointing out the mischief to his companion, for Morris was with him, looking very sympathetic, as he borrowed the Doctor’s walking-cane and carried his mathematical studies into daily life and utility by bending down and taking the dimensions of the elephant’s great circular foot-prints.The Doctor frowned as he turned and saw who were approaching; but explanations followed as he rather ponderously led the way into his study, where everything connected with the discipline of his school was always discussed.“Oh, of course, Colonel Severn,” he said, as his visitor took leave. “I hold your ward and son perfectly blameless, and have nothing to say about their absence from my establishment this morning.—But I hope, young gentlemen, that this is the last of these adventures; and I am glad, Colonel, that you met them and made them your guests.”“Unintentionally, my dear sir—unintentionally,” said the Colonel stiffly. “I did mean to ask your permission for them to dine with me once more; but after this morning’s meeting I shall not do so. We mustn’t interfere with the discipline of the school boys,” he said. “To-morrow morning I return to town, and probably I shall not see you again for a couple of months. Good-morning, Doctor; good-morning.—You will see me to the door, boys?”The Doctor smiled and bowed, and the two lads walked past Wrench and then down with the Colonel to the Doctor’s gate, where he stood for a few minutes talking.“That fellow civil and attentive?” he said, giving his Malacca cane a wave in the direction of Wrench.“Yes, father; very nice and obliging.”“Give him that,” said the Colonel, slipping a crown-piece into his son’s hand; “and, let’s see; you get your month’s allowance regularly. Not overrunning the constable, I hope—not getting into debt?”The boys shook their heads, and after a few words more the Colonel marched off, erect and soldierly, while the boys rather slowly and unwillingly returned to their room to give a finishing touch or two to their rather hasty morning toilet.
The yellow silk handkerchief was brought a great deal into use by Mr Ramball to dab his head; and once Glyn nudged his schoolfellow’s elbow and suggested that the proprietor was going to cry with disappointment from being told that he was labouring under a very grave mistake.
Soon after the two boys slipped away so as to make for the school and excuse themselves for being out of bounds and going out unseen so early in the morning.
They “slipped away” at Ramball’s request. “Just walk up and down with me a few times,” he said, “till we get on the other side of the caravans. No, not yet,” he said. “I have sent one of the men for a big basket of carrots. They are nice and sweet, and his highness likes them. Once get him busy on them and he won’t notice you going.”
A big two-handled basket made its appearance a few minutes later, piled up with the orange-red vegetables, and carried by a couple of Ramball’s men.
“Just give him two or three yourselves, gentlemen,” said the proprietor, “and start him on them. Then get behind him and walk right away straight from his tail. You may do anything of that sort, as I dare say you know, without his seeing. Elephants are very stupid beasts about what goes on behind their backs.”
The two boys did as requested, and as soon as the elephant was busy they strolled off with its owner, who was very eager to shake hands with them again and beg of them to come to his place.
“Here, I have had enough of this,” cried Glyn as soon as they were out of the great field, “and I never thought of it before. What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Singh. “I have left my watch on the dressing-table.”
Just then the striking of the church clock fell upon their ears, and Singh began to count aloud, while Glyn expressed his belief that it must be seven.
“Why, all the chaps will be out when we get back,” he said.
“Eight!” said Singh loudly.
“Nonsense! You have muddled it,” cried Glyn.
“Nine!” cried Singh.
“Rubbish!”
“It is. Look at the shops all open, and the people about.”
“Well; but the time couldn’t have gone like that,” cried Glyn. “Here, what are we going to say? If you are right—why, breakfast’s over ever so long ago, and the fellows are all going in to class. But you can’t be right.”
“Well, there’s the clock,” said Singh contemptuously. “Look for yourself.”
The hands and Roman numerals of the great church clock had only lately been re-gilded, and they seemed to twinkle and blink and point derisively in the bright morning sunshine.
“Oh, I say,” cried Glyn, “who could have thought it! Bother old Ramball and his beasts! Feeding his elephant! I wish somebody would feed me! Why, we shall get no breakfast.”
“Oh yes, we shall,” cried Singh confidently. “Why, you forget we are in the infirmary still, and Mrs Hamton won’t let us go without our breakfast. But come along; let’s trot back round by the shortest way.”
They started the military double directly, and were about half-way back to the school when, as they turned a corner to get into the main road, a sharp military voice shouted:
“Halt! Right face!”
“Father!” cried Glyn.
“Morning,” cried the Colonel, as he shook hands warmly with both. “You two invalids having your constitutional? Well, you ought to be taken off the sick-list now. I have just been having my walk before breakfast. I came past the Doctor’s, but could not see anything of either of you.”
“Going in to breakfast, father?” said Glyn.
“Yes, my boy. You had yours at eight o’clock, I suppose. What time were you up? Seven o’clock, I suppose.”
“No, father,” said Glyn, laughing. “It must have been about four.”
“Four o’clock! What made you get up so soon as that?” cried the Colonel, as he looked from one to the other.
“We were called, father, and obliged to get up.” And between them the boys narrated their early morning adventure.
“Tut, tut, tut, tut!” ejaculated the Colonel. “Then you have had no breakfast at all?”
Singh shook his head.
“Come along with me, then,” cried the Colonel. “I’ll soon put that right.”
“Can’t, father. We haven’t got leave. We shall be punished for breaking out of school.”
“Nonsense!” cried his father. “You didn’t break out of school. You were carried off. Here, I’ll put that right with the Doctor; but there must be no more of this. You lads don’t want elephants till you go back to Dour, and that won’t be for years to come.”
Very shortly afterwards the boys were once more seated at the Colonel’s table, to partake of a leisurely breakfast, before he, as he termed it, marched them back like a couple of deserters to the Doctor’s establishment.
Wrench looked at them at first wonderingly, and then shook his head as he announced that the boys were all in their classes, and that the Doctor was going round the grounds with the gardener to see what damage was done by the second visit of the elephant; when the Colonel proposed that they should follow and give the boys’ version of their adventure.
They came upon him they sought almost directly after, for he had inspected the damaged hedge, and was gazing very ruefully at the broken-down palisade and the torn and trampled flower-beds.
He was busy pointing out the mischief to his companion, for Morris was with him, looking very sympathetic, as he borrowed the Doctor’s walking-cane and carried his mathematical studies into daily life and utility by bending down and taking the dimensions of the elephant’s great circular foot-prints.
The Doctor frowned as he turned and saw who were approaching; but explanations followed as he rather ponderously led the way into his study, where everything connected with the discipline of his school was always discussed.
“Oh, of course, Colonel Severn,” he said, as his visitor took leave. “I hold your ward and son perfectly blameless, and have nothing to say about their absence from my establishment this morning.—But I hope, young gentlemen, that this is the last of these adventures; and I am glad, Colonel, that you met them and made them your guests.”
“Unintentionally, my dear sir—unintentionally,” said the Colonel stiffly. “I did mean to ask your permission for them to dine with me once more; but after this morning’s meeting I shall not do so. We mustn’t interfere with the discipline of the school boys,” he said. “To-morrow morning I return to town, and probably I shall not see you again for a couple of months. Good-morning, Doctor; good-morning.—You will see me to the door, boys?”
The Doctor smiled and bowed, and the two lads walked past Wrench and then down with the Colonel to the Doctor’s gate, where he stood for a few minutes talking.
“That fellow civil and attentive?” he said, giving his Malacca cane a wave in the direction of Wrench.
“Yes, father; very nice and obliging.”
“Give him that,” said the Colonel, slipping a crown-piece into his son’s hand; “and, let’s see; you get your month’s allowance regularly. Not overrunning the constable, I hope—not getting into debt?”
The boys shook their heads, and after a few words more the Colonel marched off, erect and soldierly, while the boys rather slowly and unwillingly returned to their room to give a finishing touch or two to their rather hasty morning toilet.
Chapter Seventeen.The Professor makes a Request.Morris, being off duty, as he termed it, walked down the road to clear his head a little of mathematical calculations, as well as to devise an examination paper intended for the improvement of his pupils; not that he looked upon it in that light, for as soon as he had mentally got it into shape, ready for committing to paper, he laughed to himself and rubbed his white hands over and over again in his intense satisfaction.“That will puzzle their brains,” he said maliciously. “That will give some of them a headache;” and as he spoke, on his way back, he suddenly awakened to the fact that he was just coming to the damaged hedge, where a couple of men were for the second time, by Ramball’s orders, restaking, half-cutting through, and bending down for interlacing purposes sturdy old growths of hawthorn.The next moment he was conscious of the fact that Professor Barclay, who looked particularly neat, refined, and clean, was coming up to him with a most friendly smile and with extended hand.The Professor was clean-shaven, wore his hair cut very short, and from his hat to his boots he was spotless; but somehow or other there was a suggestion that the profession of Sanskrit did not result in the possession of wealth, for the Professor’s hat was not so new as it had been once, one of his well-polished boots had a smile in its upper leather just where the little toe pressed outwards, there was a suggestion about his very stiff shirt-collar of the growth of saw-like teeth that might be very unpleasant if they came in contact with his ears, while his tightly buttoned-up frock-coat, which looked very nice in front, had grown extremely shiny in two places at the back where the wearer’s blade-bones were prominent.Morris took the extended hand and shook it, but not half so affectionately as the Professor shook his, while agreeing very simply that the day was remarkably fine; and then, oddly enough, Morris, though the Professor gave him no reason for his thoughts in words, began thinking of a quiet little place in the town where modest dinners were provided, one of which Morris did not require in the least, inasmuch as a repast would be provided for him gratuitously in the Doctor’s establishment. Item, he began thinking, too, of half-crowns. But his thoughts were turned in another direction by the Professor.“So this is the spot,” he said, “where the elephant broke through?”“Yes,” said Morris eagerly; “great mischievous beast! It will be a good thing when it’s out of the town.”“Exactly,” said the Professor, “unless the proprietor had some one to manage it who understood its ways. Is it true, as I have heard, that the young Prince and his friend and fellow-pupil controlled the huge beast by giving it orders in Hindustani?”“Oh yes,” said Morris, smiling now, as he ridded himself of thoughts of cheap dinners and half-crowns.“Well, I am not surprised,” continued the Professor; “but it was a pity I was not there.”“Pity you were not there?” said Morris, making a suggestion with his hand preparatory to saying “good-bye—can’t stop,” and then telling something very much like a fib; for it was in his mind to say, “So glad to have met you.”“Yes,” said the Professor nonchalantly, “you see, I know Hindustani thoroughly; and though I suppose my pronunciation would be faulty in the ears of a native, I could very well make myself understood.”“Ah, yes,” said Morris hastily; “so I should suppose; but—er—you will excuse me?” And he glanced at his watch. “I am afraid I must be back at the college. It is close upon dinner-time.”The Professor sighed and inadvertently sniffed as poor boys sniff who are passing cookshops.“In a moment, my dear friend. I will not detain you; but I will walk with you as far as the college. It will be in my way. You see, just when one wants them most, important letters—important pecuniary letters—have such a bad habit of being delayed.”Morris coughed.“Now, nothing could have happened better for me than that I should have met you, a brother-student; though we follow divergent lines, you for the attainment of mathematical precision, I for the diffusion of Eastern lore, you of all men seem to have extended towards me a kindly interest.”“Oh, well, that was perfectly natural,” said Morris feebly, as, inadvertently he thrust his right hand into his pocket, started, coloured, and withdrew it quickly.“Now,” continued the Professor, “I want you to give me your advice about seeing the Doctor again.”Morris shook his head.“Ah, I see what you are thinking; but that was for a permanent post. Now, don’t you think he might accept my services, say, for a non-resident and three days a week?”“No,” said Morris, “I am sure he wouldn’t. Your coming made Rampson dreadfully jealous, and he told me afterwards that the Doctor assured him that he should make no change.”“Well, say one day a week.”Morris shook his head again and looked down the road, as if hoping that some one would come and rescue him from his position.“Don’t speak in haste,” said the Professor, taking him with finger and thumb by the plaited guard of silk, as if he had intentions upon the watch—not to know the time.“I am obliged to speak in haste,” replied Morris. “You see, it is so near—”“Exactly—dinner-time. But for Sanskrit, a lesson a week—”“The Doctor declared he should not introduce Sanskrit in the curriculum of study.”“Dear, dear! And with that young Eastern Prince in the establishment, and his companion the son of that magnificent old Colonel with the wondrous moustache!” And as he spoke the Professor passed his hand over his closely shaven upper lip. “Well, well, the Doctor knows his own business best; but I must confess that I am disappointed, my dear friend.”“I am very, very sorry,” said Morris, drawing back a little; and as the guard tightened, and the watch began to rise out of his pocket, he gave way again and the watch sank down.So did its owner’s spirits, for the Professor continued:“Don’t you think I might go back with you to the college and call upon the Doctor once more?”“No, that I don’t,” said Morris hastily; “for almost directly he will be going into the dining-hall.”“Well, what would that matter? Country hospitality and—you understand. But there, if you think the time adverse, I certainly would not presume. But, by the way, would you believe it, that letter has not come this morning?”“Yes,” said Morris faintly. “You said so just now.”“And it puts me to the greatest inconvenience. I am almost ashamed to ask you.”“Would that you were quite!” thought Morris.“But would you mind—say a couple of half-crowns—a mere trifle, and the moment the letter comes—really, I think it must be stuck in the post-office somewhere from wrong direction. Is there another Plymborough in England?”“Oh no; this is the only one.”“Yes, two half-crowns, and the moment the letter arrives I shall hurry to you to repay you with many thanks, your kindly interest in my welfare.”“And the other two?”“Oh, of course,” said the Professor. “The-ank you. Some day, my dear Morris, I hope and believe— But, by the way, that young Prince: I could not help taking the greatest interest in what he told me. It came naturally as the result of questions and in conversation upon the beauty of Eastern costume. I remember saying to him, ‘Why are not you, a young Eastern potentate, robed in the resplendent garments of your country, wearing a picturesque helmet, plumed, and decked with gorgeous jewels? I remember,’ I said, ‘a visit paid by the Nawab of Puttyputty when I was one of the masters at the college at Longbourne. He was magnificently dressed, a most picturesque figure amongst the gentlemen, who in their sombre black looked like so many waiters. I remember he wore a resplendent belt, the clasps of which were formed of gigantic emeralds engraved with Eastern characters—Sanskrit, I believe, though I never had them in my hand.’ And the boy proudly told me that he possessed just such a one, though he never wore it, because it would not be suitable with modern English costume. All a boy’s romance, I suppose—recollections of theArabian Nights.”“Oh no,” said Morris; “it is quite true.”“Dear me,” said the Professor, “what an opportunity! Why, I would give worlds to see it,” he added with a laugh. “It has been one of the regrets of my life that I did not ask the Nawab’s permission to inspect those clasps. To my thinking, the inscriptions must have been of that so-called talismanic kind in which these weak heathen believe. Now, do you think it possible that you could prevail upon your young friend—”“Oh no, I am sure I couldn’t,” said Morris, trying hard to read the distant church clock.“But say you convey to him my invitation, and ask him to bring the belt to my rooms one afternoon.”“Oh, really I—”“Oh, such a simple thing—educational, and—I beg your pardon, you must go? Of course. I am afraid I have been prolix; but my dear Morris, bear that in mind. A little discussion upon those inscriptions would be beneficial to the boy—I could tell him things he would be proud to know—and it would enable me to send a profitable description to the newspapers.—Yes, good-bye till we meet again.”They separated, and the Professor walked slowly away, with his attention equally balanced between recollections of the Nawab’s clasps and the last little dinner he had eaten at the country refreshment-house at Morris’s expense, what time he played a pleasant little game of raising one half-crown from where it lay upon its fellow at the bottom of his pocket and letting it fall again with an agreeable chink.
Morris, being off duty, as he termed it, walked down the road to clear his head a little of mathematical calculations, as well as to devise an examination paper intended for the improvement of his pupils; not that he looked upon it in that light, for as soon as he had mentally got it into shape, ready for committing to paper, he laughed to himself and rubbed his white hands over and over again in his intense satisfaction.
“That will puzzle their brains,” he said maliciously. “That will give some of them a headache;” and as he spoke, on his way back, he suddenly awakened to the fact that he was just coming to the damaged hedge, where a couple of men were for the second time, by Ramball’s orders, restaking, half-cutting through, and bending down for interlacing purposes sturdy old growths of hawthorn.
The next moment he was conscious of the fact that Professor Barclay, who looked particularly neat, refined, and clean, was coming up to him with a most friendly smile and with extended hand.
The Professor was clean-shaven, wore his hair cut very short, and from his hat to his boots he was spotless; but somehow or other there was a suggestion that the profession of Sanskrit did not result in the possession of wealth, for the Professor’s hat was not so new as it had been once, one of his well-polished boots had a smile in its upper leather just where the little toe pressed outwards, there was a suggestion about his very stiff shirt-collar of the growth of saw-like teeth that might be very unpleasant if they came in contact with his ears, while his tightly buttoned-up frock-coat, which looked very nice in front, had grown extremely shiny in two places at the back where the wearer’s blade-bones were prominent.
Morris took the extended hand and shook it, but not half so affectionately as the Professor shook his, while agreeing very simply that the day was remarkably fine; and then, oddly enough, Morris, though the Professor gave him no reason for his thoughts in words, began thinking of a quiet little place in the town where modest dinners were provided, one of which Morris did not require in the least, inasmuch as a repast would be provided for him gratuitously in the Doctor’s establishment. Item, he began thinking, too, of half-crowns. But his thoughts were turned in another direction by the Professor.
“So this is the spot,” he said, “where the elephant broke through?”
“Yes,” said Morris eagerly; “great mischievous beast! It will be a good thing when it’s out of the town.”
“Exactly,” said the Professor, “unless the proprietor had some one to manage it who understood its ways. Is it true, as I have heard, that the young Prince and his friend and fellow-pupil controlled the huge beast by giving it orders in Hindustani?”
“Oh yes,” said Morris, smiling now, as he ridded himself of thoughts of cheap dinners and half-crowns.
“Well, I am not surprised,” continued the Professor; “but it was a pity I was not there.”
“Pity you were not there?” said Morris, making a suggestion with his hand preparatory to saying “good-bye—can’t stop,” and then telling something very much like a fib; for it was in his mind to say, “So glad to have met you.”
“Yes,” said the Professor nonchalantly, “you see, I know Hindustani thoroughly; and though I suppose my pronunciation would be faulty in the ears of a native, I could very well make myself understood.”
“Ah, yes,” said Morris hastily; “so I should suppose; but—er—you will excuse me?” And he glanced at his watch. “I am afraid I must be back at the college. It is close upon dinner-time.”
The Professor sighed and inadvertently sniffed as poor boys sniff who are passing cookshops.
“In a moment, my dear friend. I will not detain you; but I will walk with you as far as the college. It will be in my way. You see, just when one wants them most, important letters—important pecuniary letters—have such a bad habit of being delayed.”
Morris coughed.
“Now, nothing could have happened better for me than that I should have met you, a brother-student; though we follow divergent lines, you for the attainment of mathematical precision, I for the diffusion of Eastern lore, you of all men seem to have extended towards me a kindly interest.”
“Oh, well, that was perfectly natural,” said Morris feebly, as, inadvertently he thrust his right hand into his pocket, started, coloured, and withdrew it quickly.
“Now,” continued the Professor, “I want you to give me your advice about seeing the Doctor again.”
Morris shook his head.
“Ah, I see what you are thinking; but that was for a permanent post. Now, don’t you think he might accept my services, say, for a non-resident and three days a week?”
“No,” said Morris, “I am sure he wouldn’t. Your coming made Rampson dreadfully jealous, and he told me afterwards that the Doctor assured him that he should make no change.”
“Well, say one day a week.”
Morris shook his head again and looked down the road, as if hoping that some one would come and rescue him from his position.
“Don’t speak in haste,” said the Professor, taking him with finger and thumb by the plaited guard of silk, as if he had intentions upon the watch—not to know the time.
“I am obliged to speak in haste,” replied Morris. “You see, it is so near—”
“Exactly—dinner-time. But for Sanskrit, a lesson a week—”
“The Doctor declared he should not introduce Sanskrit in the curriculum of study.”
“Dear, dear! And with that young Eastern Prince in the establishment, and his companion the son of that magnificent old Colonel with the wondrous moustache!” And as he spoke the Professor passed his hand over his closely shaven upper lip. “Well, well, the Doctor knows his own business best; but I must confess that I am disappointed, my dear friend.”
“I am very, very sorry,” said Morris, drawing back a little; and as the guard tightened, and the watch began to rise out of his pocket, he gave way again and the watch sank down.
So did its owner’s spirits, for the Professor continued:
“Don’t you think I might go back with you to the college and call upon the Doctor once more?”
“No, that I don’t,” said Morris hastily; “for almost directly he will be going into the dining-hall.”
“Well, what would that matter? Country hospitality and—you understand. But there, if you think the time adverse, I certainly would not presume. But, by the way, would you believe it, that letter has not come this morning?”
“Yes,” said Morris faintly. “You said so just now.”
“And it puts me to the greatest inconvenience. I am almost ashamed to ask you.”
“Would that you were quite!” thought Morris.
“But would you mind—say a couple of half-crowns—a mere trifle, and the moment the letter comes—really, I think it must be stuck in the post-office somewhere from wrong direction. Is there another Plymborough in England?”
“Oh no; this is the only one.”
“Yes, two half-crowns, and the moment the letter arrives I shall hurry to you to repay you with many thanks, your kindly interest in my welfare.”
“And the other two?”
“Oh, of course,” said the Professor. “The-ank you. Some day, my dear Morris, I hope and believe— But, by the way, that young Prince: I could not help taking the greatest interest in what he told me. It came naturally as the result of questions and in conversation upon the beauty of Eastern costume. I remember saying to him, ‘Why are not you, a young Eastern potentate, robed in the resplendent garments of your country, wearing a picturesque helmet, plumed, and decked with gorgeous jewels? I remember,’ I said, ‘a visit paid by the Nawab of Puttyputty when I was one of the masters at the college at Longbourne. He was magnificently dressed, a most picturesque figure amongst the gentlemen, who in their sombre black looked like so many waiters. I remember he wore a resplendent belt, the clasps of which were formed of gigantic emeralds engraved with Eastern characters—Sanskrit, I believe, though I never had them in my hand.’ And the boy proudly told me that he possessed just such a one, though he never wore it, because it would not be suitable with modern English costume. All a boy’s romance, I suppose—recollections of theArabian Nights.”
“Oh no,” said Morris; “it is quite true.”
“Dear me,” said the Professor, “what an opportunity! Why, I would give worlds to see it,” he added with a laugh. “It has been one of the regrets of my life that I did not ask the Nawab’s permission to inspect those clasps. To my thinking, the inscriptions must have been of that so-called talismanic kind in which these weak heathen believe. Now, do you think it possible that you could prevail upon your young friend—”
“Oh no, I am sure I couldn’t,” said Morris, trying hard to read the distant church clock.
“But say you convey to him my invitation, and ask him to bring the belt to my rooms one afternoon.”
“Oh, really I—”
“Oh, such a simple thing—educational, and—I beg your pardon, you must go? Of course. I am afraid I have been prolix; but my dear Morris, bear that in mind. A little discussion upon those inscriptions would be beneficial to the boy—I could tell him things he would be proud to know—and it would enable me to send a profitable description to the newspapers.—Yes, good-bye till we meet again.”
They separated, and the Professor walked slowly away, with his attention equally balanced between recollections of the Nawab’s clasps and the last little dinner he had eaten at the country refreshment-house at Morris’s expense, what time he played a pleasant little game of raising one half-crown from where it lay upon its fellow at the bottom of his pocket and letting it fall again with an agreeable chink.
Chapter Eighteen.“Where’s my Practice-Bat?”The Doctor was quite facetious one morning, for, in addressing the masters, his words being meant for the whole school, he said jocularly that if Severn and Singh had formed any intention of devoting their pocket-allowance to ordering a castle from London they were too late. He looked very hard at Morris as he spoke, and waited for him to reply.“A castle, sir?” said the master. “I don’t quite apprehend your meaning.”“Oh, it was only this, Mr Morris. My mind does not serve me as to what these things are called in India; but I think, and I dare say Mr Rampson will set me right if I am wrong, that in the old classic days in the Punic or Carthaginian wars what were termed castles were fitted on to the backs of elephants, from which archers, slingers, and javelin-throwers dealt out destruction among their foes.”“Yes, sir. Quite correct, sir,” said Rampson, “for Pliny states—”“Oh, I don’t think we will disturb Pliny to-day, Mr Rampson,” said the Doctor, smiling, “unless your pupils particularly wish it,” and he glanced round the school.“No, sir!”“No, sir!”“No, sir!” came in chorus.“Very well, gentlemen; then Pliny shall be left at rest. It occurred to me that if there was to be much more of the pursuit of elephant-riding as displayed by Messrs Severn and Singh, a castle, such, I presume, as is kept in record by a celebrated hostelry somewhere in the south of London, where, upon one occasion, I stepped into one of those popular modes of conveyance called omnibuses, would be much more suitable for a mode of progression than the animal’s neck. A very slight study of the human anatomy would satisfy the most exacting that nature never intended youths of fifteen or sixteen to strain their muscles after the fashion of acrobats, so as to enable them to bestride an elephant’s spine.”There was a low titter at this, and every eye was turned upon Glyn and Singh, the latter turning very red.“By the way, Mr Singh,” continued the Doctor, “you have a colloquial term for the form of castle used in India, have you not?”The word colloquial seemed to puzzle Singh, who remained silent, and Glyn spoke up.“Howdah, sir!” he shouted.“How dare you, sir!” cried the Doctor, with mock indignation; and then he looked smilingly round for appreciation of his pun, which was not seen till Morris expounded it.Then there was a roar. While he waited patiently enough, the Doctor took off his gold-rimmed spectacles, drew a neatly folded white handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, breathed upon the glasses, and polished them, kept on holding them to the light to make sure that there was not the symptom of a blur, and as soon as the laughter had died out he exclaimed, “Because—”There was a dead silence, the boys large and small glancing at one another in a questioning way as if asking whether this was the beginning of another mild joke or a bit of facetiae that ought to be laughed at as it stood.“Because—” said the Doctor again, more loudly than before, and he seemed, as he glanced round, to direct his words at every boy in turn.“Because, gentlemen—” This time the Doctor looked hard at the masters, and then continued loudly, “it seems as if I am to be allowed to possess my boarders in peace, the quickset hedge is not to be torn-up any more, the split oak palings on the farther side are to remain untouched. To be brief, I am informed upon the best authority that the visit of Ramball’s menagerie is at an end. So now, Mr Singh, you may close up your repertoire of Hindustani words, and condescend to plain English with an occasional garnish from the classic writers of old. We will now resume our studies.”All traces of excitement seemed to give way now to the humdrum routine of school-life. This, however, was diversified with plenty of cricket, Slegge posing in every match as the chief batsman and captain of the eleven.But he had to work hard to keep up his position in his own particular speciality, which was that of slogging batsman, for he was a bad bowler, too cowardly to keep a wicket, and too big, heavy, and lazy to field.At the same time he was too jealous and vain to let others step in and help themselves to some of his laurels, notably the two young Indians, as he called them, for none of the older lads, his fellow-pupils for years past, ever dreamed of disputing his position. But both Glyn and Singh, untroubled by a thought of giving way to the older boy, proved themselves a splendid addition to the eleven that was picked from time to time to combat the town players or some other school.To Slegge’s annoyance, he very soon found that if the prestige of the school was to be kept up Glyn and Singh must be in the eleven, for the former in a very short time was acknowledged to be the sharpest bowler in the school, while, from long practice together, Singh was an admirable wicket-keeper—one who laughed at gloves and pads, was utterly without fear, and had, as Wrench said—he being a great admirer of a game in which he never had a chance to play—“a nye like a nork.”“But they can’t beat me at batting,” Slegge said to himself grimly, and he worked at his practice like a slave. But as a slave he made others slave—to wit, all the small unfortunates who took his fancy.“You needn’t grumble, you lazy little beggars,” he used to say. “Nasty, ungrateful little beasts! See what bowlers I’m making of you, and what fielders!”And in his manufacture of cricketers he would have out five or six at a time, with three or four cricket-balls, to keep on bowling to him while he went on slogging and hitting the balls in all directions, utterly reckless of the poor little fellows’ exhaustion and of the risks they ran, as he drove or cut the balls right at them or far away over the field.The natural result was that in regular play Slegge’s score always mounted up when he was not opposed to Glyn and Singh, when there was generally what the delighted younger boys denominated a “swodge of rows;” while Slegge himself, always ready to pick a quarrel, never now attempted to settle it with fists, but he fought pretty hard with his tongue, and always declared that there was “a beastly conspiracy.”Possibly there was; but it was only between the two friends, who strove their best to put him out, the one by a clean ball which sent stumps and bails flying, the other by laying his wicket low with a sharp movement when Slegge’s long legs had, in his excitement carried him off his ground.One morning there was a little meeting held under the elms by twelve of the very junior juniors, for they had found out a malicious act on the part of their tyrant, or rather he had openly boasted of it himself, and not only showed the little fellows visually what he had done to his practice-bat, as he called it, but also awakened them thoroughly to his play.“’Tisn’t fair,” said one of them. “I vote we lay it all before Burney and Severn and Hot Pickles.”“No,” said another, “it isn’t fair. He couldn’t do it off Glyn Severn’s bowling; not that we chaps bowl badly. Severn calls some of us toppers, and last week and several times since he put me up to giving the balls a twist. You know; you saw—those long-pitched balls that drop in as quiet as a mouse, and look as if they are going wide, but curl in round the end of a fellow’s bat, just tap a stump, and down go the bails before he knows where he is.”“Yes; but I don’t see much good in that,” said another. “You didn’t take much out of it yesterday when you put old Shanks’s wicket down, and he gave you a lick on the head for it.”“I don’t care if he’d given me a dozen,” said the little fellow with a grin. “I took old Bully Bounce’s wicket. Oh, didn’t it make him wild!”“Yes; but it isn’t fair, as I said before,” cried the first speaker. “He could do what he liked with our bowling before, but now we have got to run nearly off our legs to fetch up fivers. I say it isn’t fair. He must have got half-a-pound of lead let into the end of his bat. Took it down to the carpenter’s, he did, and made old Gluepot bore three holes in the bottom with a centre-bit, pour in a lot of melted lead, and then plug the bottom up again with wood.”“Here, I know,” said one; “let’s watch for our chance, and get Wrench—he’ll keep it a secret; he hates Longshanks—let’s ask him to make a fire under the wash-house copper, and one of us could do it I’ll volunteer. I’ll smuggle out Slegge’s bat, and it wouldn’t take long. Just hold it on the fire where it’s hottest, and the lead would all melt and run out.”“And what about the end of the bat?” said another.“Well, it would be all light again, just the same as it was before.”“Light?” cried the objector. “Why, it would be all black. The wood would all burn away before the fire got to the lead.”“Would it?” said the inventor of the scheme thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose it would. But we must do something.”This was agreed tonem con, and, after a long meeting for boys, their faces indicated a satisfactory termination of their debate.That something had been done was proved two days later, for the intervening day had been wet; and as usual, on the second day, when it was time to turn out in the grounds, Slegge ordered up his little band of slaves and marched them to the cricket-shed for the necessary implements. Half-a-dozen balls were got out of one locker, the stumps and bails from another, and from his own particular lock-up, flap-topped receptacle, Slegge proceeded to take out the special bat with which he practised hitting—two more, his club-bat and his match-bat, lying there in their cases of green flannel.Taking his key, one of a bunch, from his pocket, Slegge proceeded to unlock the flap-topped cupboard; but somehow the key would not go in, and he withdrew it, and under the impression that he had made a wrong selection he passed another along the ring and tried that. This was worse, and he tried a third, before withdrawing it, blowing into the pipe, and making it whistle, and then tapping it and bringing forth a few grains of sand.“Here, what game’s this?” shouted the big fellow in what his enemies called a bubble-and-squeak voice, due to the fact that in the change that was taking place his tones were an awkward mingling of treble and bass; and as he spoke he seized the boy nearest to him by the ear.“Oh, please don’t, sir! Please don’t! Please don’t! I haven’t done nothing!”“Done nothing, you little vermin!” shouted Slegge. “Who said you had? But you’ve done something. Now, don’t deny it, for I’ll half-skin you. You can’t deceive me. You have been blowing this lock full of sand and gravel with a pea-shooter.”“I haven’t, sir; I haven’t indeed!” cried the boy.“Then tell me who has?” cried Slegge; and, seizing the boy’s fingers, he held his hand, palm downwards, on the top of the locker, and then began to torture him by sawing the knuckles of his own doubled fist across the back.The boy squealed and yelped, but bore the inquisition-like torture bravely enough.Nothing was got out of him, however; and, getting between the boys and the door of the shed, Slegge tortured one after the other, but could not find a traitor to impeach the rest. And at last, in a fit of rage, he stepped back and with a furious kick sent the lid of the locker flying upwards; while, tearful though some of the eyes of the lookers-on were, they were full of a strange kind of exultation as they glanced at one another and waited for thedénouementthat was to come.As Slegge saw the result of his kick to the heavy lid, he stepped quickly forward and thrust in his right hand to withdraw the bat; but he uttered a yell, for the great cover rebounded and came down with a bang, sending one of the little fellows skimming out of the shed to get round to the back so that his laughter should not be seen.“That’s one for you, Burton, when I get hold of you again,” cried Slegge. “I shan’t forget it. And—here, what’s the meaning of this? Where’s my practice-bat?”There was a dead silence in the shady, wooden room, and three or four of the boys stood looking as if they were going to have apoplectic fits, for their eyes started and their teeth were clenched together, and they seemed as if they were trying to swallow something.But there was no danger. It was only bottled-up mirth that they were striving hard to suppress.“Ugh–h–h–ugh!” snarled Slegge, making a rush at the boys, who scattered at once, dashed out of the door before any of them were seized, and ran as if for their lives, to begin shrieking with laughter as soon as they were out of reach.In his rage at what he looked upon as a theft, Slegge chased first one and then another; but he was too big, heavy, and clumsy to catch the delighted imps, who, as active as monkeys, dodged him at every turn, till at last he stood panting.“All right,” he said. “I am not going to make myself hot with running after you; but the Doctor’s going to know that he has got thieves in the school. I am not going to be robbed for nothing, and if my practice-bat is not back in its place before night I shall go and tell Bewley that he’s got blackguards and fellows who use false keys in his school. So you’d better look sharp and bring that bat back. And here, mind this; the carpenter will charge six or seven shillings for putting on a new lock here, so you have got to find sixpence apiece before Saturday night and hand it over to me.”But in spite of threats the bat was not brought back nor its purloiner or annexer betrayed. The bat was gone, and its owner’s practice was modified, for he did not care to improve the driving power of his first-class bats by having them bored and weighted with lead.
The Doctor was quite facetious one morning, for, in addressing the masters, his words being meant for the whole school, he said jocularly that if Severn and Singh had formed any intention of devoting their pocket-allowance to ordering a castle from London they were too late. He looked very hard at Morris as he spoke, and waited for him to reply.
“A castle, sir?” said the master. “I don’t quite apprehend your meaning.”
“Oh, it was only this, Mr Morris. My mind does not serve me as to what these things are called in India; but I think, and I dare say Mr Rampson will set me right if I am wrong, that in the old classic days in the Punic or Carthaginian wars what were termed castles were fitted on to the backs of elephants, from which archers, slingers, and javelin-throwers dealt out destruction among their foes.”
“Yes, sir. Quite correct, sir,” said Rampson, “for Pliny states—”
“Oh, I don’t think we will disturb Pliny to-day, Mr Rampson,” said the Doctor, smiling, “unless your pupils particularly wish it,” and he glanced round the school.
“No, sir!”
“No, sir!”
“No, sir!” came in chorus.
“Very well, gentlemen; then Pliny shall be left at rest. It occurred to me that if there was to be much more of the pursuit of elephant-riding as displayed by Messrs Severn and Singh, a castle, such, I presume, as is kept in record by a celebrated hostelry somewhere in the south of London, where, upon one occasion, I stepped into one of those popular modes of conveyance called omnibuses, would be much more suitable for a mode of progression than the animal’s neck. A very slight study of the human anatomy would satisfy the most exacting that nature never intended youths of fifteen or sixteen to strain their muscles after the fashion of acrobats, so as to enable them to bestride an elephant’s spine.”
There was a low titter at this, and every eye was turned upon Glyn and Singh, the latter turning very red.
“By the way, Mr Singh,” continued the Doctor, “you have a colloquial term for the form of castle used in India, have you not?”
The word colloquial seemed to puzzle Singh, who remained silent, and Glyn spoke up.
“Howdah, sir!” he shouted.
“How dare you, sir!” cried the Doctor, with mock indignation; and then he looked smilingly round for appreciation of his pun, which was not seen till Morris expounded it.
Then there was a roar. While he waited patiently enough, the Doctor took off his gold-rimmed spectacles, drew a neatly folded white handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out, breathed upon the glasses, and polished them, kept on holding them to the light to make sure that there was not the symptom of a blur, and as soon as the laughter had died out he exclaimed, “Because—”
There was a dead silence, the boys large and small glancing at one another in a questioning way as if asking whether this was the beginning of another mild joke or a bit of facetiae that ought to be laughed at as it stood.
“Because—” said the Doctor again, more loudly than before, and he seemed, as he glanced round, to direct his words at every boy in turn.
“Because, gentlemen—” This time the Doctor looked hard at the masters, and then continued loudly, “it seems as if I am to be allowed to possess my boarders in peace, the quickset hedge is not to be torn-up any more, the split oak palings on the farther side are to remain untouched. To be brief, I am informed upon the best authority that the visit of Ramball’s menagerie is at an end. So now, Mr Singh, you may close up your repertoire of Hindustani words, and condescend to plain English with an occasional garnish from the classic writers of old. We will now resume our studies.”
All traces of excitement seemed to give way now to the humdrum routine of school-life. This, however, was diversified with plenty of cricket, Slegge posing in every match as the chief batsman and captain of the eleven.
But he had to work hard to keep up his position in his own particular speciality, which was that of slogging batsman, for he was a bad bowler, too cowardly to keep a wicket, and too big, heavy, and lazy to field.
At the same time he was too jealous and vain to let others step in and help themselves to some of his laurels, notably the two young Indians, as he called them, for none of the older lads, his fellow-pupils for years past, ever dreamed of disputing his position. But both Glyn and Singh, untroubled by a thought of giving way to the older boy, proved themselves a splendid addition to the eleven that was picked from time to time to combat the town players or some other school.
To Slegge’s annoyance, he very soon found that if the prestige of the school was to be kept up Glyn and Singh must be in the eleven, for the former in a very short time was acknowledged to be the sharpest bowler in the school, while, from long practice together, Singh was an admirable wicket-keeper—one who laughed at gloves and pads, was utterly without fear, and had, as Wrench said—he being a great admirer of a game in which he never had a chance to play—“a nye like a nork.”
“But they can’t beat me at batting,” Slegge said to himself grimly, and he worked at his practice like a slave. But as a slave he made others slave—to wit, all the small unfortunates who took his fancy.
“You needn’t grumble, you lazy little beggars,” he used to say. “Nasty, ungrateful little beasts! See what bowlers I’m making of you, and what fielders!”
And in his manufacture of cricketers he would have out five or six at a time, with three or four cricket-balls, to keep on bowling to him while he went on slogging and hitting the balls in all directions, utterly reckless of the poor little fellows’ exhaustion and of the risks they ran, as he drove or cut the balls right at them or far away over the field.
The natural result was that in regular play Slegge’s score always mounted up when he was not opposed to Glyn and Singh, when there was generally what the delighted younger boys denominated a “swodge of rows;” while Slegge himself, always ready to pick a quarrel, never now attempted to settle it with fists, but he fought pretty hard with his tongue, and always declared that there was “a beastly conspiracy.”
Possibly there was; but it was only between the two friends, who strove their best to put him out, the one by a clean ball which sent stumps and bails flying, the other by laying his wicket low with a sharp movement when Slegge’s long legs had, in his excitement carried him off his ground.
One morning there was a little meeting held under the elms by twelve of the very junior juniors, for they had found out a malicious act on the part of their tyrant, or rather he had openly boasted of it himself, and not only showed the little fellows visually what he had done to his practice-bat, as he called it, but also awakened them thoroughly to his play.
“’Tisn’t fair,” said one of them. “I vote we lay it all before Burney and Severn and Hot Pickles.”
“No,” said another, “it isn’t fair. He couldn’t do it off Glyn Severn’s bowling; not that we chaps bowl badly. Severn calls some of us toppers, and last week and several times since he put me up to giving the balls a twist. You know; you saw—those long-pitched balls that drop in as quiet as a mouse, and look as if they are going wide, but curl in round the end of a fellow’s bat, just tap a stump, and down go the bails before he knows where he is.”
“Yes; but I don’t see much good in that,” said another. “You didn’t take much out of it yesterday when you put old Shanks’s wicket down, and he gave you a lick on the head for it.”
“I don’t care if he’d given me a dozen,” said the little fellow with a grin. “I took old Bully Bounce’s wicket. Oh, didn’t it make him wild!”
“Yes; but it isn’t fair, as I said before,” cried the first speaker. “He could do what he liked with our bowling before, but now we have got to run nearly off our legs to fetch up fivers. I say it isn’t fair. He must have got half-a-pound of lead let into the end of his bat. Took it down to the carpenter’s, he did, and made old Gluepot bore three holes in the bottom with a centre-bit, pour in a lot of melted lead, and then plug the bottom up again with wood.”
“Here, I know,” said one; “let’s watch for our chance, and get Wrench—he’ll keep it a secret; he hates Longshanks—let’s ask him to make a fire under the wash-house copper, and one of us could do it I’ll volunteer. I’ll smuggle out Slegge’s bat, and it wouldn’t take long. Just hold it on the fire where it’s hottest, and the lead would all melt and run out.”
“And what about the end of the bat?” said another.
“Well, it would be all light again, just the same as it was before.”
“Light?” cried the objector. “Why, it would be all black. The wood would all burn away before the fire got to the lead.”
“Would it?” said the inventor of the scheme thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose it would. But we must do something.”
This was agreed tonem con, and, after a long meeting for boys, their faces indicated a satisfactory termination of their debate.
That something had been done was proved two days later, for the intervening day had been wet; and as usual, on the second day, when it was time to turn out in the grounds, Slegge ordered up his little band of slaves and marched them to the cricket-shed for the necessary implements. Half-a-dozen balls were got out of one locker, the stumps and bails from another, and from his own particular lock-up, flap-topped receptacle, Slegge proceeded to take out the special bat with which he practised hitting—two more, his club-bat and his match-bat, lying there in their cases of green flannel.
Taking his key, one of a bunch, from his pocket, Slegge proceeded to unlock the flap-topped cupboard; but somehow the key would not go in, and he withdrew it, and under the impression that he had made a wrong selection he passed another along the ring and tried that. This was worse, and he tried a third, before withdrawing it, blowing into the pipe, and making it whistle, and then tapping it and bringing forth a few grains of sand.
“Here, what game’s this?” shouted the big fellow in what his enemies called a bubble-and-squeak voice, due to the fact that in the change that was taking place his tones were an awkward mingling of treble and bass; and as he spoke he seized the boy nearest to him by the ear.
“Oh, please don’t, sir! Please don’t! Please don’t! I haven’t done nothing!”
“Done nothing, you little vermin!” shouted Slegge. “Who said you had? But you’ve done something. Now, don’t deny it, for I’ll half-skin you. You can’t deceive me. You have been blowing this lock full of sand and gravel with a pea-shooter.”
“I haven’t, sir; I haven’t indeed!” cried the boy.
“Then tell me who has?” cried Slegge; and, seizing the boy’s fingers, he held his hand, palm downwards, on the top of the locker, and then began to torture him by sawing the knuckles of his own doubled fist across the back.
The boy squealed and yelped, but bore the inquisition-like torture bravely enough.
Nothing was got out of him, however; and, getting between the boys and the door of the shed, Slegge tortured one after the other, but could not find a traitor to impeach the rest. And at last, in a fit of rage, he stepped back and with a furious kick sent the lid of the locker flying upwards; while, tearful though some of the eyes of the lookers-on were, they were full of a strange kind of exultation as they glanced at one another and waited for thedénouementthat was to come.
As Slegge saw the result of his kick to the heavy lid, he stepped quickly forward and thrust in his right hand to withdraw the bat; but he uttered a yell, for the great cover rebounded and came down with a bang, sending one of the little fellows skimming out of the shed to get round to the back so that his laughter should not be seen.
“That’s one for you, Burton, when I get hold of you again,” cried Slegge. “I shan’t forget it. And—here, what’s the meaning of this? Where’s my practice-bat?”
There was a dead silence in the shady, wooden room, and three or four of the boys stood looking as if they were going to have apoplectic fits, for their eyes started and their teeth were clenched together, and they seemed as if they were trying to swallow something.
But there was no danger. It was only bottled-up mirth that they were striving hard to suppress.
“Ugh–h–h–ugh!” snarled Slegge, making a rush at the boys, who scattered at once, dashed out of the door before any of them were seized, and ran as if for their lives, to begin shrieking with laughter as soon as they were out of reach.
In his rage at what he looked upon as a theft, Slegge chased first one and then another; but he was too big, heavy, and clumsy to catch the delighted imps, who, as active as monkeys, dodged him at every turn, till at last he stood panting.
“All right,” he said. “I am not going to make myself hot with running after you; but the Doctor’s going to know that he has got thieves in the school. I am not going to be robbed for nothing, and if my practice-bat is not back in its place before night I shall go and tell Bewley that he’s got blackguards and fellows who use false keys in his school. So you’d better look sharp and bring that bat back. And here, mind this; the carpenter will charge six or seven shillings for putting on a new lock here, so you have got to find sixpence apiece before Saturday night and hand it over to me.”
But in spite of threats the bat was not brought back nor its purloiner or annexer betrayed. The bat was gone, and its owner’s practice was modified, for he did not care to improve the driving power of his first-class bats by having them bored and weighted with lead.
Chapter Nineteen.Wrench is Confidential.The Doctor was very fond of lecturing the boys on the beneficial qualities of water.“Gentlemen,” he said, “I pass no stern edicts or objections to the use of beer, and for those who like to drink it there is the ale of my table, which is of a nature that will do harm to no one”—which was perfectly true—“but I maintain that water—good, pure, clear, bright, sparkling spring water—is the natural drink of man. And being the natural drink of man, ergo—or, as our great national poet Shakespeare puts the word in the mouth of one of his clowns,argal—it is the natural drink of boys.”As he spoke, the Doctor poured out from a ground-glass decanter-like bottle a tumblerful of clear cold water, which he treated as if it were beer, making it bubble and foam for a moment before it subsided in the glass.The Doctor said good, pure, sparkling water, and the supply of the school possessed these qualities, for it came from a deep draw-well that went right down, cased in brick, for about forty feet, while for sixty feet more it was cut through the solid stone.The Doctor was very particular about this well, which was furnished with a mechanical arrangement of winch and barrel, which sent down one big, heavy bucket as the winder worked and brought up another full; and it was Wrench’s special task to draw the drinking-water from this well for the whole of the school, that used for domestic purposes coming from two different sources—one an ordinary well, and the other a gigantic soft-water tank.One morning early, after Singh and Glyn descended from their dormitory, and were strolling down towards the Doctor’s neatly-kept garden by a way which led them past the well-house, they stopped to listen to a clear musical pipe that was accompanied by the creaking of a wheel and the splash of water.The pipe proved to be only Wrench the footman’s whistle, and its effect was that of a well-played piccolo flute, as it kept on giving the boys the benefit of a popular air with variations, which stopped suddenly as the big full bucket reached the surface and was drawn sideways on to a ledge by the man, while a hollow musical dripping and tinkling went on as a portion of the superfluous water fell splashing back into the depths.As Wrench uttered a grunt and proceeded to fill the water-can he had brought and a couple of jugs, he turned slightly and saw that the shadow cast into the cool, moist-smelling interior was that of the two boys.“Morning, gentlemen,” he said. “What do you think of this for weather?”“Lovely,” cried Glyn. “Why, Wrench, you beat the blackbirds.”“Oh, nonsense, sir! I have often tried; but I can’t get their nice soft, sweet notes.”“No; but your whistle is of a different kind.—It’s beautiful; isn’t it, Singh?”“Yes; it’s just like those minas that we have got at home.—Give me a glass of water.”“Haven’t got a glass, sir, only a mug. Here, I’ll run and fetch you one.”“No, no,” cried Singh, and taking up the mug he held it to be filled and then drank heartily, Glyn following his example.“Beautiful clear water, young gentlemen, isn’t it?” said the man. “The Doctor says it will make you strong, and there’s iron enough in it to do any man good. I should like to have a well like that in my place when I start for myself. I should put out bills about it and call it mineral water, same as the Doctor says this is.”“How deep is the well really?”“Just a hundred foot, sir.”“How do you know? You haven’t measured it.”“Well, I measured the rope, sir. When the Doctor bought a new one for it, just a year ago, he let me fit it on instead of getting the workpeople in. That cost nothing, and the men would have made a regular job of it.”“But I meant the water. How deep is the water itself?”“Oh, the water, sir. That gets to be about twenty or thirty feet in the winter-time; but in the summer it gets very low—in the dry time, you know. I don’t suppose there’s above six or eight feet in now.”“But I say,” cried Glyn, “set up for yourself? Why, you’re not going to start a school?”“School, sir?” said the man, laughing. “’Tain’t likely! No, sir; me and somebody—never you mind who—is going to be married one of these days, when we have saved up enough, and we are going to take a house at the seaside and let lodgings to visitors who come down for their health. Why, a well of water like that would be the making of us.”“Oh!” cried Glyn, with his eyes twinkling. “You with your somebody and your never mind who! Why, I have found you out, Wrenchy. I know who the lady is.”“Lady she is, sir,” said the man sharply, “and right you are, though she’s only poor and belongs to my station of life. But, begging your pardon, with all your Latin and Greek and study, you haven’t found that out.”“That I have,” cried Glyn. “It’s the cook.”The man turned scarlet and stood gazing at the boy with his mouth a little way open.“Why, who telled you, sir?” he stammered at last.“She did,” said Glyn quietly.“What! My Emily told you that?” cried the man. “In them same words?”“No; she never spoke to me in my life,” replied Glyn. “Singh and I were going down the garden one day, down one path, and she’d been to get some parsley, while you were carrying in one of the garden chairs, and she looked at you. That was enough, and we two laughed about it afterwards. So you see we know.”“Well, I always did say as you was two sharp uns, sir,” said the man. And then confidentially, “Yes, sir, that’s right. We have been thinking about it for the last five years, and we’d like it to come off at any time. For, you see, it’s just the same with us, sir, as it is with rich people—I mean, well-to-do people. It don’t do to get married until you see your way.”“Till you can see your way?” said Singh, frowning. “What does he mean by that?”“Oh, I’ll soon tell you, sir. Money enough to make a fair start. There’s plenty of hard work to do here with the Doctor and such a large family of you young gentlemen as he’s got; but he’s a very good master, kind-hearted and just, and if any of us is unwell there’s everything he could want, and plenty of rest. And one don’t like to give up a comfortable home and start one that’s worse. It’s money that’s in the way, sir. We have both been saving ever since we were engaged; but it takes a long time to make your saving much when you can only put away a few pounds apiece every year.”“Oh, well, look here,” cried Glyn; “if you’ll promise not to get married while we are here at the school, I’ll give you—let’s see, what shall I say?—five pounds. I dare say father will give it to me.—Now, Singh, what will you do?”“Just the same,” replied Singh.“Thank you, gentlemen,” cried Wrench. “Come, I call that handsome; but you know,” he added laughingly, “I shouldn’t like to make any promises, for I don’t know what a certain lady would say. Thank you all the same, both of you. You’ve both been very pleasant gentlemen and very nice ever since you have been here. You neither of you ever called me a lazy beast and shied your boots at me because they wasn’t black enough, or called me a fool for not making your water hotter so as you could shave.”“Why, who did then?” cried Glyn.“Oh, I am not going to tell tales, gentlemen. Some young gents are born with tempers and some ain’t, while there are some again that come here as nice and amiable as can be, after a year or two get old and sour and ready to quarrel with everything. I don’t know; but I think sometimes it’s them Greek classics, as they call them. You see, it’s such unchristian-like looking stuff. I have looked at them sometimes in the Doctor’s study. Such heathen-looking letters; not a bit like a decent alphabet. But there, I must be off, gentlemen. I have all my work waiting, and I am going away—only think of it!—ten pounds richer than when I first began to turn that there handle this morning, if—if I stop here—I mean, if we stop here till you young gents have done schooling.”Wrench finished filling his cans of water and stooped to pick them up, but set them down again, to look at them both thoughtfully.“My word, gentlemen, you would both begin to wonder at the times and times I have laid awake of a night trying to hit a bright—I mean, think of some idea by which I could make a lot of money all at once: find some buried in a garden, or bring up a bag of gold in the bottom of one of those two water-buckets, or have somebody leave me a lot, or pick it up in the street and find afterwards it belonged to nobody. I wouldn’t care how I got it.”“So long as it was honest, Wrenchy?” said Glyn, laughing.“Oh, of course, sir—of course. You see, a man’s got a character to lose, and when a man loses his character I suppose it’s very hard to find it again; so I have been told. But I never lost mine. But I do want to get hold of a nice handy lump of money somehow, and when I do, and if I do—”“Well, what would you do then?” cried Singh.“Well, sir, I shouldn’t stop here till you two gents had done schooling.”Then, picking up his two water-cans once more, the Doctor’s footman trudged off towards the house.“That must have been old Slegge who threw his boots at him,” said Singh thoughtfully. “What a disagreeable fellow he is!”“Yes,” said Glyn. “I wish I had been there to stop it. He’s been knocking some of the little fellows about shamefully because he says that they have hidden his bat.”“You wish you had been there?” said Singh. “Why, I thought you said that you wouldn’t fight any more.”“To be sure; so I did. Well, then, I don’t wish I had been there. But I say,” continued Glyn, laughing merrily, “what a lot of Greek he must know!”“But he doesn’t,” cried Singh. “He doesn’t know much more than I do, for he came to me to help him with something the other day.”“Well, then, as Wrenchy says, how what he does know must have disagreed with him!”“Yes,” said Singh thoughtfully, as he laid his hand on his companion’s shoulder and they strolled down the garden together, waiting for the breakfast-bell to ring. “Poor old fellow! Poor old fellow! Poor old fellow!”“Well, you are a queer chap, Singh! You say you want to be thoroughly English, and you talk like that.”“Well, I do want to be English,” cried Singh, “and I try very hard to do as you do, because I know what guardian says is right.”“Well, you never heard me pity Slegge and call him poor old fellow.”“I didn’t. I meant poor Wrenchy, who wants money so badly. It must be very queer to want money very badly and not be able to get it.”“I suppose so,” replied Glyn. “I seem to have always had enough, while as for you, you’re as rich as rich; quite a king you’ll be some day, with servants and a little army, and everything you want. I say, what do you mean to do with all your money?”“I don’t know,” said Singh, laughing, and then knitting his brows, “but I should like to give Wrench some. He’s such a good, hard-working fellow, and always does everything you tell him with such a pleasant smile. I wonder how he will get all he wants. Do you think he will find it some day in a garden or in the street?”“Or have a big lump of it tumble out of the moon, or find that it’s been raining gold all over the Doctor’s lawn some morning when he gets up? No, I don’t—not a bit; and there goes the breakfast-bell, so come along.”
The Doctor was very fond of lecturing the boys on the beneficial qualities of water.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I pass no stern edicts or objections to the use of beer, and for those who like to drink it there is the ale of my table, which is of a nature that will do harm to no one”—which was perfectly true—“but I maintain that water—good, pure, clear, bright, sparkling spring water—is the natural drink of man. And being the natural drink of man, ergo—or, as our great national poet Shakespeare puts the word in the mouth of one of his clowns,argal—it is the natural drink of boys.”
As he spoke, the Doctor poured out from a ground-glass decanter-like bottle a tumblerful of clear cold water, which he treated as if it were beer, making it bubble and foam for a moment before it subsided in the glass.
The Doctor said good, pure, sparkling water, and the supply of the school possessed these qualities, for it came from a deep draw-well that went right down, cased in brick, for about forty feet, while for sixty feet more it was cut through the solid stone.
The Doctor was very particular about this well, which was furnished with a mechanical arrangement of winch and barrel, which sent down one big, heavy bucket as the winder worked and brought up another full; and it was Wrench’s special task to draw the drinking-water from this well for the whole of the school, that used for domestic purposes coming from two different sources—one an ordinary well, and the other a gigantic soft-water tank.
One morning early, after Singh and Glyn descended from their dormitory, and were strolling down towards the Doctor’s neatly-kept garden by a way which led them past the well-house, they stopped to listen to a clear musical pipe that was accompanied by the creaking of a wheel and the splash of water.
The pipe proved to be only Wrench the footman’s whistle, and its effect was that of a well-played piccolo flute, as it kept on giving the boys the benefit of a popular air with variations, which stopped suddenly as the big full bucket reached the surface and was drawn sideways on to a ledge by the man, while a hollow musical dripping and tinkling went on as a portion of the superfluous water fell splashing back into the depths.
As Wrench uttered a grunt and proceeded to fill the water-can he had brought and a couple of jugs, he turned slightly and saw that the shadow cast into the cool, moist-smelling interior was that of the two boys.
“Morning, gentlemen,” he said. “What do you think of this for weather?”
“Lovely,” cried Glyn. “Why, Wrench, you beat the blackbirds.”
“Oh, nonsense, sir! I have often tried; but I can’t get their nice soft, sweet notes.”
“No; but your whistle is of a different kind.—It’s beautiful; isn’t it, Singh?”
“Yes; it’s just like those minas that we have got at home.—Give me a glass of water.”
“Haven’t got a glass, sir, only a mug. Here, I’ll run and fetch you one.”
“No, no,” cried Singh, and taking up the mug he held it to be filled and then drank heartily, Glyn following his example.
“Beautiful clear water, young gentlemen, isn’t it?” said the man. “The Doctor says it will make you strong, and there’s iron enough in it to do any man good. I should like to have a well like that in my place when I start for myself. I should put out bills about it and call it mineral water, same as the Doctor says this is.”
“How deep is the well really?”
“Just a hundred foot, sir.”
“How do you know? You haven’t measured it.”
“Well, I measured the rope, sir. When the Doctor bought a new one for it, just a year ago, he let me fit it on instead of getting the workpeople in. That cost nothing, and the men would have made a regular job of it.”
“But I meant the water. How deep is the water itself?”
“Oh, the water, sir. That gets to be about twenty or thirty feet in the winter-time; but in the summer it gets very low—in the dry time, you know. I don’t suppose there’s above six or eight feet in now.”
“But I say,” cried Glyn, “set up for yourself? Why, you’re not going to start a school?”
“School, sir?” said the man, laughing. “’Tain’t likely! No, sir; me and somebody—never you mind who—is going to be married one of these days, when we have saved up enough, and we are going to take a house at the seaside and let lodgings to visitors who come down for their health. Why, a well of water like that would be the making of us.”
“Oh!” cried Glyn, with his eyes twinkling. “You with your somebody and your never mind who! Why, I have found you out, Wrenchy. I know who the lady is.”
“Lady she is, sir,” said the man sharply, “and right you are, though she’s only poor and belongs to my station of life. But, begging your pardon, with all your Latin and Greek and study, you haven’t found that out.”
“That I have,” cried Glyn. “It’s the cook.”
The man turned scarlet and stood gazing at the boy with his mouth a little way open.
“Why, who telled you, sir?” he stammered at last.
“She did,” said Glyn quietly.
“What! My Emily told you that?” cried the man. “In them same words?”
“No; she never spoke to me in my life,” replied Glyn. “Singh and I were going down the garden one day, down one path, and she’d been to get some parsley, while you were carrying in one of the garden chairs, and she looked at you. That was enough, and we two laughed about it afterwards. So you see we know.”
“Well, I always did say as you was two sharp uns, sir,” said the man. And then confidentially, “Yes, sir, that’s right. We have been thinking about it for the last five years, and we’d like it to come off at any time. For, you see, it’s just the same with us, sir, as it is with rich people—I mean, well-to-do people. It don’t do to get married until you see your way.”
“Till you can see your way?” said Singh, frowning. “What does he mean by that?”
“Oh, I’ll soon tell you, sir. Money enough to make a fair start. There’s plenty of hard work to do here with the Doctor and such a large family of you young gentlemen as he’s got; but he’s a very good master, kind-hearted and just, and if any of us is unwell there’s everything he could want, and plenty of rest. And one don’t like to give up a comfortable home and start one that’s worse. It’s money that’s in the way, sir. We have both been saving ever since we were engaged; but it takes a long time to make your saving much when you can only put away a few pounds apiece every year.”
“Oh, well, look here,” cried Glyn; “if you’ll promise not to get married while we are here at the school, I’ll give you—let’s see, what shall I say?—five pounds. I dare say father will give it to me.—Now, Singh, what will you do?”
“Just the same,” replied Singh.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” cried Wrench. “Come, I call that handsome; but you know,” he added laughingly, “I shouldn’t like to make any promises, for I don’t know what a certain lady would say. Thank you all the same, both of you. You’ve both been very pleasant gentlemen and very nice ever since you have been here. You neither of you ever called me a lazy beast and shied your boots at me because they wasn’t black enough, or called me a fool for not making your water hotter so as you could shave.”
“Why, who did then?” cried Glyn.
“Oh, I am not going to tell tales, gentlemen. Some young gents are born with tempers and some ain’t, while there are some again that come here as nice and amiable as can be, after a year or two get old and sour and ready to quarrel with everything. I don’t know; but I think sometimes it’s them Greek classics, as they call them. You see, it’s such unchristian-like looking stuff. I have looked at them sometimes in the Doctor’s study. Such heathen-looking letters; not a bit like a decent alphabet. But there, I must be off, gentlemen. I have all my work waiting, and I am going away—only think of it!—ten pounds richer than when I first began to turn that there handle this morning, if—if I stop here—I mean, if we stop here till you young gents have done schooling.”
Wrench finished filling his cans of water and stooped to pick them up, but set them down again, to look at them both thoughtfully.
“My word, gentlemen, you would both begin to wonder at the times and times I have laid awake of a night trying to hit a bright—I mean, think of some idea by which I could make a lot of money all at once: find some buried in a garden, or bring up a bag of gold in the bottom of one of those two water-buckets, or have somebody leave me a lot, or pick it up in the street and find afterwards it belonged to nobody. I wouldn’t care how I got it.”
“So long as it was honest, Wrenchy?” said Glyn, laughing.
“Oh, of course, sir—of course. You see, a man’s got a character to lose, and when a man loses his character I suppose it’s very hard to find it again; so I have been told. But I never lost mine. But I do want to get hold of a nice handy lump of money somehow, and when I do, and if I do—”
“Well, what would you do then?” cried Singh.
“Well, sir, I shouldn’t stop here till you two gents had done schooling.”
Then, picking up his two water-cans once more, the Doctor’s footman trudged off towards the house.
“That must have been old Slegge who threw his boots at him,” said Singh thoughtfully. “What a disagreeable fellow he is!”
“Yes,” said Glyn. “I wish I had been there to stop it. He’s been knocking some of the little fellows about shamefully because he says that they have hidden his bat.”
“You wish you had been there?” said Singh. “Why, I thought you said that you wouldn’t fight any more.”
“To be sure; so I did. Well, then, I don’t wish I had been there. But I say,” continued Glyn, laughing merrily, “what a lot of Greek he must know!”
“But he doesn’t,” cried Singh. “He doesn’t know much more than I do, for he came to me to help him with something the other day.”
“Well, then, as Wrenchy says, how what he does know must have disagreed with him!”
“Yes,” said Singh thoughtfully, as he laid his hand on his companion’s shoulder and they strolled down the garden together, waiting for the breakfast-bell to ring. “Poor old fellow! Poor old fellow! Poor old fellow!”
“Well, you are a queer chap, Singh! You say you want to be thoroughly English, and you talk like that.”
“Well, I do want to be English,” cried Singh, “and I try very hard to do as you do, because I know what guardian says is right.”
“Well, you never heard me pity Slegge and call him poor old fellow.”
“I didn’t. I meant poor Wrenchy, who wants money so badly. It must be very queer to want money very badly and not be able to get it.”
“I suppose so,” replied Glyn. “I seem to have always had enough, while as for you, you’re as rich as rich; quite a king you’ll be some day, with servants and a little army, and everything you want. I say, what do you mean to do with all your money?”
“I don’t know,” said Singh, laughing, and then knitting his brows, “but I should like to give Wrench some. He’s such a good, hard-working fellow, and always does everything you tell him with such a pleasant smile. I wonder how he will get all he wants. Do you think he will find it some day in a garden or in the street?”
“Or have a big lump of it tumble out of the moon, or find that it’s been raining gold all over the Doctor’s lawn some morning when he gets up? No, I don’t—not a bit; and there goes the breakfast-bell, so come along.”
Chapter Twenty.A Squabble.“Anybody seen anything of Singh?” cried Glyn one day as he went out into the cricket-field, where Slegge was batting to the bowling of some of his little slaves and several of the older boys were looking on.“Baa! Baa! Baa!” cried Slegge, imitating a sheep, and stopping to rest upon his bat. “Hark at the great lamb calling after its black shepherd! Go on, some of you, and help me,” and in answer to his appeal a chorus of bleating arose, in which, in obedience to a gesture made with the bat, the little bowlers and fielders were forced to join.“Well, if I were a quarrelsome chap,” said Glyn to himself, “I should just go up to Master Slegge and put my fist up against his nose. Great, stupid, malicious hobbledehoy! But it’s very plain Singhy hasn’t been here. Now, where can he be? Gone down the town perhaps to buy something—cakes or fruit I suppose. How fond he is of something nice to eat? But there, he always gives a lot away to the little fellows. Well, so do I, if you come to that; but I don’t think it’s because I give them buns and suckers that they all like me as they do. Well, I suppose that’s where Singh’s gone; but he might have told me and asked me to go with him.”The boy strolled back with the intention of going into the class-room, now empty, to sit down and have a good long read; but as he drew near the house he came upon the page, who, wonderful to relate, displayed a face without a vestige of blacking.“Hi, Sam!” cried Glyn. “Seen anything of Mr Singh?”“Yes, sir; I see him down the town—saw him down the town, sir, I mean,” said the boy hastily, recalling the fact that he had been corrected several times about his use of the verb “To see.”“Saw him down the town,” he muttered to himself. “See, saw; see, saw. Wish I could recollect all that.”“Which way was he going?” said Glyn.“Straight down, sir, towards the church, along of Mr Morris, sir.”“Humph! Gone for a walk, I suppose,” said Glyn thoughtfully.“Yes, sir, they were walking, sir. Shall I tell him you want him, sir, when he comes back?”“Oh no, I don’t think you need. I dare say he’ll come to me,” replied Glyn, and he strolled into the big class-room, unlocked his desk, got out a book of travels, opened it at one particular spot which he had reached a day or two before, and then began to read, growing so interested that a couple of hours glided away like half of one.Then, closing the book with a sigh, as the dial on the wall insisted upon the fact that time was passing, he replaced the work and went up to his room to prepare for the evening meal.“What a pity it is,” he said, “that half-holidays will go so quickly. Classic afternoons always seem three times as long, and so do Mr Morris’s lessons. I wish I were not so stupid over mathematics.”On reaching the door of his room he thrust it open quietly, and found Singh kneeling down before his Indian bullock-trunk, lifting out some of its contents ready to make place for something else.“Why, hallo! There you are, then!” Singh started as sharply as if he had received a slap on the shoulder, scrambled up something long tied up in brown paper that lay by his side, thrust it into the trunk, and began to cover it quickly with some of the articles that had been taken out.“Ha, ha! Caught you!” cried Glyn. “What have you got there? Cakes or a box of sweets?”“Neither,” said Singh rather slowly.“Oh, all right, I don’t want to know,” cried Glyn good-humouredly. “But I know: you mean a surprise—a tuck-out to-night when we come to bed. Who are you going to ask?”“No one,” said Singh shortly.“Oh, I would. Ask Burney and Miller. They’re good chaps, only Slegge keeps them under his thumb so. They’d give anything to break away, I know.”Singh was silent.“Here, I say,” cried Glyn, “I tell you what would be a rare good bit of fun, and if the Doctor knew he wouldn’t notice it. Let’s get about a dozen of the little chaps some night, Burton and Robson, the small juniors, and give them a regular good feed quite late. They would enjoy it. What do you say?”“Yes,” said Singh; “to be sure we will.”“I say,” said Glyn, “I’d have come with you if you had asked me this afternoon. What a close old chap you are! Where have you been? Here, I’m going to see what you have got there.”“No, no!” cried Singh excitedly, as Glyn stepped forward, only meaning it as a feint; and the boy threw himself across the open box, to begin scrambling the dislodged things over the something that was loosely covered with brown paper, and in his hurry and excitement, instead of hiding it thoroughly, exposing one small corner. But it was quite big enough to let Glyn see what it was; and, laughing aloud, he cried:“Why, what a coward you are! I was only pretending.”Singh hurriedly closed the lid of the trunk.“Where have you been?”Singh was silent for a moment, for a struggle was going on in his mind.“I have been out for a walk with Mr Morris,” he said.“Well, there’s no harm in that,” said Glyn. “Where did you go? Across the park, or down by the river?”Singh was silent for a moment or two once more, and then in a hurried way he seemed to master his reserve, and said:“We didn’t go regularly for a walk. We went to see Professor Barclay.”“Mr Morris took you to see Professor Barclay?” said Glyn.“Yes, yes; but I wish you wouldn’t keep on questioning me so.”“Well, I want to know,” said Glyn quietly. “You don’t speak out and tell me, so I am obliged to ask.”“Well,” said Singh gloomily, “I want to be open and tell you; but you are such a queer fellow.”“Yes, I am,” said Glyn, looking hard at his companion.“Well, so you are,” said Singh half-angrily; “and you are so fond of finding fault with me and not liking what I do.”“I don’t know that I should have minded your going to see Professor Barclay,” said Glyn slowly, “especially if you went with Mr Morris.”“No, you oughtn’t to,” cried Singh hastily. “Mr Morris said that it would be a kindness to go and see the poor gentleman, for he is a gentleman and a great scholar.”“So I suppose,” said Glyn, “in Sanskrit.”“Yes; and he’s very poor, and can’t get an engagement, clever as he is; and it seems very shocking for a gentleman to be so poor that he can’t pay his way, and we are so rich.”“Oh, I’m not,” said Glyn, laughing.“Yes, you are, while that poor fellow can hardly pay the rent of his room, and he confessed to me—I didn’t ask him—but he was so anxious to tell me why he had not paid me that money back that—”“Why, you haven’t been lending him money, have you?” cried Glyn.“Well—yes, a trifle. He called it lending; but when I heard from Mr Morris how badly the poor fellow was off, of course I meant it as a gift; but I couldn’t tell a gentleman that it was to be so.”“Then you have been there before?”“Yes, two or three times. Mr Morris said that it would be a kindness, for the Professor sent me messages, begging me to go and see him, as he has led such a lonely life among strangers, and he wanted to communicate to me some very interesting discoveries he had made in the Hindustani language.”“Oh,” said Glyn slowly; “and did he ask you to lend him money each time you went?”“Well, not quite. He somehow let it out how poor he was, and I felt quite hot and red to think of him being in such a condition; and Mr Morris, too, gave me a sort of hint that a trifle would be acceptable to him. And there, that’s all. Why do you want to keep on bothering about it?”“Mr Morris took you there, and talked to you like that?”“Yes, yes, yes,” cried Singh petulantly. “I told you so.”“And did he say something to you about Hindustani and Sanskrit?”“Yes. But there, let’s talk about something else.”“Directly,” said Glyn. “And did he read the letters on the emeralds?”Singh looked up at him sharply. “What made you ask that?” he said.“I asked you,” said Glyn, “because I see you took the belt with you this afternoon.”“How did you know that?” snapped out the boy.“Why, a baby would have known it. It was plain enough when you were in such a hurry to scramble it out of sight, and were so clumsy that you showed me what it was.”“Oh!” ejaculated the boy sharply; and he stood biting his lip. “I—I—”“There, don’t stammer about it,” said Glyn.“But I felt that you would find fault with me and object.”“That’s quite right,” said Glyn, frowning. “I should have done so, for you promised me not to begin showing that thing about to anybody. Why will you be so weak and proud of what, after all, is only a toy?”“It isn’t a toy,” cried the boy indignantly. “It is something very great and noble to possess such a—such a—”“Showy thing,” said Glyn grimly.“You can’t see it correctly,” said Singh; “and I only took it that Mr Barclay, who is a great student, might read—decipher, he called it—the words engraved on the stones; and he was very grateful because I let him read them, and thanked me very much.”“But you might have remembered what I said to you about it.”“I did remember, Glynny,” cried the boy warmly. “I thought of you all the time, and I even offended him at last by not doing what he wished.”“What did he wish? To get you to lend him more money?”“No,” cried Singh. “He wanted me to leave the belt with him, so that he might sit up all night and copy the inscription.”“He did?”“Yes; and I wouldn’t, because I thought you wouldn’t like it, and that it wouldn’t be right. But you don’t know how hard it was to do. Mr Morris said, though, that I was quite right, and he told me so twice after we came away.”“But why was it hard?” asked Glyn.“Because Mr Barclay said it would be nothing to me, and it meant so much to him. But it worried me very much, because it seemed as if I, who am so rich, would not help one who was so poor.”“I don’t care,” cried Glyn angrily. “You did quite right, and this Mr Barclay can’t be a gentleman. If he were, he would not have pressed you so hard. It isn’t as if it were a book. If that were lost, you could buy another one.”“But he said that he’d take the greatest care of it, and never let it go out of his hands till he had brought it back and delivered it to me.”“I don’t care,” cried Glyn. “He oughtn’t to have asked you, for that belt belonged to your father, and now it belongs to you, and some day it will have to go to your successors.”“Then you think I have done quite right, Glynny?”“Well, not quite; if you had you would have told me that you were going to take it there for the Professor to see.”“Oh, don’t begin again about that,” replied Singh piteously. “I told you I didn’t mention it because I thought you would find fault.”“Yes, you did,” said Glyn rather importantly, “and that shows that you felt you were not doing right. There, I am not going to say any more about it. I am only your companion. It isn’t as if I were your guardian and had authority over you; but I am very glad that Mr Morris thought you did quite right in not leaving the belt. I wish you hadn’t got it, and the old thing was safe back with all the rest of your treasures. You’d no business to want to bring it. A schoolboy doesn’t want such things as that.”“Don’t say any more about it, please,” cried Singh piteously.“Lock it up then, quite at the bottom of your box, and never do such a thing again. It would serve you jolly well right if you lost it.”“Oh, I say!” cried Singh.“And promise me that if that man asks you to let him have it again you will come and tell me and go with me to the Doctor. I am sure he wouldn’t like this gentleman—I suppose he is a gentleman—”“Oh yes,” said Singh thoughtfully; “he’s a professional gentleman.”“Well, whatever he is,” said Glyn, “I am sure the Doctor wouldn’t like it.”“Look here,” cried Singh eagerly, “I’ll promise you, if you like, for I am getting to hate the old thing. I am tired of it, and I shall be ashamed to wear it now after all you have said, and feel as if I were dressed up for a show. You take it now, and lock it up in your drawers. You’d take more care of it than I could; add then you wouldn’t bully me any more.”The boy made for his bullock-trunk; but Glyn caught him by the arm and stopped him.“That’ll do,” he said.“What do you mean?” cried Singh. “You will take care of it for me?”“That I won’t,” cried Glyn, “and you ought to be ashamed to ask me to.”“Ashamed?” cried Singh, flushing. “Ashamed to put full trust in you?”“No; but you ought to be ashamed not to be able to trust yourself. It’s like saying to me, ‘I am such a weak-minded noodle that I’ve no confidence in myself.’”“Oh,” cried Singh passionately, “there never was such a disagreeable fellow as you are. You are always bullying me about something, and you make me feel sometimes as if I quite hate you.”“Don’t believe you,” said Glyn, with a half-laugh.“Well, you may then, for it’s true.” Then, changing his tone and drawing himself up, Singh continued, “Why, it’s like telling me that I am a liar. How dare you, sir! Please have the goodness to remember who I am!”“Don’t want any remembrance for that,” said Glyn coolly. “Why, who are you? My schoolfellow in the same class.”“I am the Maharajah of Dour, sir,” said the boy haughtily.“Not while you are here. You’re only a schoolboy like myself, learning to be an English gentleman.”“Do you want me to strike you?” cried Singh fiercely.“No,” said Glyn coolly. “I shouldn’t like you to do that.”“Then, you do remember who I am,” cried Singh, swelling up metaphorically and beginning to pace the room.“I shouldn’t remember it a bit,” said Glyn coolly. “But I should punch your head the same as I should any other fellow’s—the same as I often have before.”“Yes, in a most cowardly way, because you were stronger and had learned more how to use those nasty old boxing-gloves, you coward!”“Ah, well, I can’t help that, you know,” said Glyn coolly. “I have always felt squirmy when I have had to fight some chap for bullying you. I felt so shrinky when I had that set-to with old Slegge, till he hurt me, and then I forgot all about it. Yes, I suppose I am a bit of a coward.”Singh walked up and down the chamber with his eyes flashing and his lips twitching every now and then, while his hands opened and shut.“Yes,” he cried passionately, “you forget yourself, and you are taking advantage of me now I am over here in this nasty cold country, where it’s nearly always raining, and right away from my own people, instead of being the friend that my guardian wished. But there’s going to be an end of it, for I shall ask the Doctor to let me have a room to myself, and I’ll go my way and you may go yours. Yes, and if it were not degrading myself I should strike you the same as I did that great bully Slegge.”“Well, do if you like. I won’t go crying to the Doctor and saying, ‘Please, sir, Singh hit me.’”“It would be lowering myself, or else I would. I, as a prince, can’t stoop to fight with one of my own servants.”“Well, look here,” cried Glyn, “I don’t want you to fight. Come on now and punch my head. I promise you that I won’t hit back.”Singh advanced to him immediately with doubled fists, and Glyn stood up laughing in his face and put his hands behind him.“No,” cried Singh. “Come down the cricket-field behind the trees, and we will take two of the fellows with us and have it out, for I am sick of it, and I’ll put up with no more.”“All right,” said Glyn coolly. “But lock that belt up first at the bottom of your box or where it’s safest.”“Not I,” cried Singh loftily. “I can’t stop to think of a few rubbishing gems when my honour’s at stake like this.”“Well,” said Glyn, “if you won’t, I must;” and, crossing to the trunk, he opened it, saw that the belt-case was right down in one corner below some clothes, banged down the lid, locked it up, and offered Singh the keys.“Bah!” ejaculated the boy, and he turned away.“Let’s see,” said Glyn, in the most imperturbable, good-humoured way; “we’ll have Burney and one of the other big chaps. I’ll have Burney. What do you say to Slegge?”Singh made no reply, but stood scowling out of the window.“But I say, the first thing will be that they will ask what the row’s about. What were we quarrelling for, Singhy?”There was no reply.“Oh, I remember,” continued Glyn. “Because I bullied you about showing off with that belt. Well, we can’t say anything about that. What shall we say? Look here, how would it be to go down the field together and fall out all at once, and you hit me, and I’ll hit you back, and then we will rush at one another, calling names, and the fellows will come up to see what’s the matter, and then we will fight.”“Ur–r–r–r–r–ur!” growled Singh, rushing at him with clenched fists; but as he saw the good-humoured twinkle in his companion’s eyes, the boy stopped short, and his clenched fists dropped to his sides. “You are laughing at me,” he said; “laughing in your nasty, cold-blooded English way.”“Well, isn’t it enough to make a fellow laugh? Here are you trying to get up a quarrel about nothing, and threatening to break with me, when you know you don’t mean it all the time.”“I do mean it!” raged out the boy. “For you have insulted me cruelly.”“Ah, that’s what you say now, Singhy; but before you go to bed to-night you will be as vexed with yourself as can be, and wish you had not said what you have. You will feel then that I have only spoken to you just as the dad would if he had been here. And then what would you have done? Looked at him for a minute like a tiger with its claws all spread out, and the next minute you would have done what you always did do.”“What was that?” cried the boy fiercely.“Held out your hand and said, ‘I am sorry. I was wrong.’”Singh turned away and walked to the window, to stand looking out for a few minutes before turning back; and then he walked up to Glyn and said: “Come down into the cricket-field.”“To have it out?” said Glyn quietly.“Oh, Glynny!” cried the boy, and he held out his hand.
“Anybody seen anything of Singh?” cried Glyn one day as he went out into the cricket-field, where Slegge was batting to the bowling of some of his little slaves and several of the older boys were looking on.
“Baa! Baa! Baa!” cried Slegge, imitating a sheep, and stopping to rest upon his bat. “Hark at the great lamb calling after its black shepherd! Go on, some of you, and help me,” and in answer to his appeal a chorus of bleating arose, in which, in obedience to a gesture made with the bat, the little bowlers and fielders were forced to join.
“Well, if I were a quarrelsome chap,” said Glyn to himself, “I should just go up to Master Slegge and put my fist up against his nose. Great, stupid, malicious hobbledehoy! But it’s very plain Singhy hasn’t been here. Now, where can he be? Gone down the town perhaps to buy something—cakes or fruit I suppose. How fond he is of something nice to eat? But there, he always gives a lot away to the little fellows. Well, so do I, if you come to that; but I don’t think it’s because I give them buns and suckers that they all like me as they do. Well, I suppose that’s where Singh’s gone; but he might have told me and asked me to go with him.”
The boy strolled back with the intention of going into the class-room, now empty, to sit down and have a good long read; but as he drew near the house he came upon the page, who, wonderful to relate, displayed a face without a vestige of blacking.
“Hi, Sam!” cried Glyn. “Seen anything of Mr Singh?”
“Yes, sir; I see him down the town—saw him down the town, sir, I mean,” said the boy hastily, recalling the fact that he had been corrected several times about his use of the verb “To see.”
“Saw him down the town,” he muttered to himself. “See, saw; see, saw. Wish I could recollect all that.”
“Which way was he going?” said Glyn.
“Straight down, sir, towards the church, along of Mr Morris, sir.”
“Humph! Gone for a walk, I suppose,” said Glyn thoughtfully.
“Yes, sir, they were walking, sir. Shall I tell him you want him, sir, when he comes back?”
“Oh no, I don’t think you need. I dare say he’ll come to me,” replied Glyn, and he strolled into the big class-room, unlocked his desk, got out a book of travels, opened it at one particular spot which he had reached a day or two before, and then began to read, growing so interested that a couple of hours glided away like half of one.
Then, closing the book with a sigh, as the dial on the wall insisted upon the fact that time was passing, he replaced the work and went up to his room to prepare for the evening meal.
“What a pity it is,” he said, “that half-holidays will go so quickly. Classic afternoons always seem three times as long, and so do Mr Morris’s lessons. I wish I were not so stupid over mathematics.”
On reaching the door of his room he thrust it open quietly, and found Singh kneeling down before his Indian bullock-trunk, lifting out some of its contents ready to make place for something else.
“Why, hallo! There you are, then!” Singh started as sharply as if he had received a slap on the shoulder, scrambled up something long tied up in brown paper that lay by his side, thrust it into the trunk, and began to cover it quickly with some of the articles that had been taken out.
“Ha, ha! Caught you!” cried Glyn. “What have you got there? Cakes or a box of sweets?”
“Neither,” said Singh rather slowly.
“Oh, all right, I don’t want to know,” cried Glyn good-humouredly. “But I know: you mean a surprise—a tuck-out to-night when we come to bed. Who are you going to ask?”
“No one,” said Singh shortly.
“Oh, I would. Ask Burney and Miller. They’re good chaps, only Slegge keeps them under his thumb so. They’d give anything to break away, I know.”
Singh was silent.
“Here, I say,” cried Glyn, “I tell you what would be a rare good bit of fun, and if the Doctor knew he wouldn’t notice it. Let’s get about a dozen of the little chaps some night, Burton and Robson, the small juniors, and give them a regular good feed quite late. They would enjoy it. What do you say?”
“Yes,” said Singh; “to be sure we will.”
“I say,” said Glyn, “I’d have come with you if you had asked me this afternoon. What a close old chap you are! Where have you been? Here, I’m going to see what you have got there.”
“No, no!” cried Singh excitedly, as Glyn stepped forward, only meaning it as a feint; and the boy threw himself across the open box, to begin scrambling the dislodged things over the something that was loosely covered with brown paper, and in his hurry and excitement, instead of hiding it thoroughly, exposing one small corner. But it was quite big enough to let Glyn see what it was; and, laughing aloud, he cried:
“Why, what a coward you are! I was only pretending.”
Singh hurriedly closed the lid of the trunk.
“Where have you been?”
Singh was silent for a moment, for a struggle was going on in his mind.
“I have been out for a walk with Mr Morris,” he said.
“Well, there’s no harm in that,” said Glyn. “Where did you go? Across the park, or down by the river?”
Singh was silent for a moment or two once more, and then in a hurried way he seemed to master his reserve, and said:
“We didn’t go regularly for a walk. We went to see Professor Barclay.”
“Mr Morris took you to see Professor Barclay?” said Glyn.
“Yes, yes; but I wish you wouldn’t keep on questioning me so.”
“Well, I want to know,” said Glyn quietly. “You don’t speak out and tell me, so I am obliged to ask.”
“Well,” said Singh gloomily, “I want to be open and tell you; but you are such a queer fellow.”
“Yes, I am,” said Glyn, looking hard at his companion.
“Well, so you are,” said Singh half-angrily; “and you are so fond of finding fault with me and not liking what I do.”
“I don’t know that I should have minded your going to see Professor Barclay,” said Glyn slowly, “especially if you went with Mr Morris.”
“No, you oughtn’t to,” cried Singh hastily. “Mr Morris said that it would be a kindness to go and see the poor gentleman, for he is a gentleman and a great scholar.”
“So I suppose,” said Glyn, “in Sanskrit.”
“Yes; and he’s very poor, and can’t get an engagement, clever as he is; and it seems very shocking for a gentleman to be so poor that he can’t pay his way, and we are so rich.”
“Oh, I’m not,” said Glyn, laughing.
“Yes, you are, while that poor fellow can hardly pay the rent of his room, and he confessed to me—I didn’t ask him—but he was so anxious to tell me why he had not paid me that money back that—”
“Why, you haven’t been lending him money, have you?” cried Glyn.
“Well—yes, a trifle. He called it lending; but when I heard from Mr Morris how badly the poor fellow was off, of course I meant it as a gift; but I couldn’t tell a gentleman that it was to be so.”
“Then you have been there before?”
“Yes, two or three times. Mr Morris said that it would be a kindness, for the Professor sent me messages, begging me to go and see him, as he has led such a lonely life among strangers, and he wanted to communicate to me some very interesting discoveries he had made in the Hindustani language.”
“Oh,” said Glyn slowly; “and did he ask you to lend him money each time you went?”
“Well, not quite. He somehow let it out how poor he was, and I felt quite hot and red to think of him being in such a condition; and Mr Morris, too, gave me a sort of hint that a trifle would be acceptable to him. And there, that’s all. Why do you want to keep on bothering about it?”
“Mr Morris took you there, and talked to you like that?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” cried Singh petulantly. “I told you so.”
“And did he say something to you about Hindustani and Sanskrit?”
“Yes. But there, let’s talk about something else.”
“Directly,” said Glyn. “And did he read the letters on the emeralds?”
Singh looked up at him sharply. “What made you ask that?” he said.
“I asked you,” said Glyn, “because I see you took the belt with you this afternoon.”
“How did you know that?” snapped out the boy.
“Why, a baby would have known it. It was plain enough when you were in such a hurry to scramble it out of sight, and were so clumsy that you showed me what it was.”
“Oh!” ejaculated the boy sharply; and he stood biting his lip. “I—I—”
“There, don’t stammer about it,” said Glyn.
“But I felt that you would find fault with me and object.”
“That’s quite right,” said Glyn, frowning. “I should have done so, for you promised me not to begin showing that thing about to anybody. Why will you be so weak and proud of what, after all, is only a toy?”
“It isn’t a toy,” cried the boy indignantly. “It is something very great and noble to possess such a—such a—”
“Showy thing,” said Glyn grimly.
“You can’t see it correctly,” said Singh; “and I only took it that Mr Barclay, who is a great student, might read—decipher, he called it—the words engraved on the stones; and he was very grateful because I let him read them, and thanked me very much.”
“But you might have remembered what I said to you about it.”
“I did remember, Glynny,” cried the boy warmly. “I thought of you all the time, and I even offended him at last by not doing what he wished.”
“What did he wish? To get you to lend him more money?”
“No,” cried Singh. “He wanted me to leave the belt with him, so that he might sit up all night and copy the inscription.”
“He did?”
“Yes; and I wouldn’t, because I thought you wouldn’t like it, and that it wouldn’t be right. But you don’t know how hard it was to do. Mr Morris said, though, that I was quite right, and he told me so twice after we came away.”
“But why was it hard?” asked Glyn.
“Because Mr Barclay said it would be nothing to me, and it meant so much to him. But it worried me very much, because it seemed as if I, who am so rich, would not help one who was so poor.”
“I don’t care,” cried Glyn angrily. “You did quite right, and this Mr Barclay can’t be a gentleman. If he were, he would not have pressed you so hard. It isn’t as if it were a book. If that were lost, you could buy another one.”
“But he said that he’d take the greatest care of it, and never let it go out of his hands till he had brought it back and delivered it to me.”
“I don’t care,” cried Glyn. “He oughtn’t to have asked you, for that belt belonged to your father, and now it belongs to you, and some day it will have to go to your successors.”
“Then you think I have done quite right, Glynny?”
“Well, not quite; if you had you would have told me that you were going to take it there for the Professor to see.”
“Oh, don’t begin again about that,” replied Singh piteously. “I told you I didn’t mention it because I thought you would find fault.”
“Yes, you did,” said Glyn rather importantly, “and that shows that you felt you were not doing right. There, I am not going to say any more about it. I am only your companion. It isn’t as if I were your guardian and had authority over you; but I am very glad that Mr Morris thought you did quite right in not leaving the belt. I wish you hadn’t got it, and the old thing was safe back with all the rest of your treasures. You’d no business to want to bring it. A schoolboy doesn’t want such things as that.”
“Don’t say any more about it, please,” cried Singh piteously.
“Lock it up then, quite at the bottom of your box, and never do such a thing again. It would serve you jolly well right if you lost it.”
“Oh, I say!” cried Singh.
“And promise me that if that man asks you to let him have it again you will come and tell me and go with me to the Doctor. I am sure he wouldn’t like this gentleman—I suppose he is a gentleman—”
“Oh yes,” said Singh thoughtfully; “he’s a professional gentleman.”
“Well, whatever he is,” said Glyn, “I am sure the Doctor wouldn’t like it.”
“Look here,” cried Singh eagerly, “I’ll promise you, if you like, for I am getting to hate the old thing. I am tired of it, and I shall be ashamed to wear it now after all you have said, and feel as if I were dressed up for a show. You take it now, and lock it up in your drawers. You’d take more care of it than I could; add then you wouldn’t bully me any more.”
The boy made for his bullock-trunk; but Glyn caught him by the arm and stopped him.
“That’ll do,” he said.
“What do you mean?” cried Singh. “You will take care of it for me?”
“That I won’t,” cried Glyn, “and you ought to be ashamed to ask me to.”
“Ashamed?” cried Singh, flushing. “Ashamed to put full trust in you?”
“No; but you ought to be ashamed not to be able to trust yourself. It’s like saying to me, ‘I am such a weak-minded noodle that I’ve no confidence in myself.’”
“Oh,” cried Singh passionately, “there never was such a disagreeable fellow as you are. You are always bullying me about something, and you make me feel sometimes as if I quite hate you.”
“Don’t believe you,” said Glyn, with a half-laugh.
“Well, you may then, for it’s true.” Then, changing his tone and drawing himself up, Singh continued, “Why, it’s like telling me that I am a liar. How dare you, sir! Please have the goodness to remember who I am!”
“Don’t want any remembrance for that,” said Glyn coolly. “Why, who are you? My schoolfellow in the same class.”
“I am the Maharajah of Dour, sir,” said the boy haughtily.
“Not while you are here. You’re only a schoolboy like myself, learning to be an English gentleman.”
“Do you want me to strike you?” cried Singh fiercely.
“No,” said Glyn coolly. “I shouldn’t like you to do that.”
“Then, you do remember who I am,” cried Singh, swelling up metaphorically and beginning to pace the room.
“I shouldn’t remember it a bit,” said Glyn coolly. “But I should punch your head the same as I should any other fellow’s—the same as I often have before.”
“Yes, in a most cowardly way, because you were stronger and had learned more how to use those nasty old boxing-gloves, you coward!”
“Ah, well, I can’t help that, you know,” said Glyn coolly. “I have always felt squirmy when I have had to fight some chap for bullying you. I felt so shrinky when I had that set-to with old Slegge, till he hurt me, and then I forgot all about it. Yes, I suppose I am a bit of a coward.”
Singh walked up and down the chamber with his eyes flashing and his lips twitching every now and then, while his hands opened and shut.
“Yes,” he cried passionately, “you forget yourself, and you are taking advantage of me now I am over here in this nasty cold country, where it’s nearly always raining, and right away from my own people, instead of being the friend that my guardian wished. But there’s going to be an end of it, for I shall ask the Doctor to let me have a room to myself, and I’ll go my way and you may go yours. Yes, and if it were not degrading myself I should strike you the same as I did that great bully Slegge.”
“Well, do if you like. I won’t go crying to the Doctor and saying, ‘Please, sir, Singh hit me.’”
“It would be lowering myself, or else I would. I, as a prince, can’t stoop to fight with one of my own servants.”
“Well, look here,” cried Glyn, “I don’t want you to fight. Come on now and punch my head. I promise you that I won’t hit back.”
Singh advanced to him immediately with doubled fists, and Glyn stood up laughing in his face and put his hands behind him.
“No,” cried Singh. “Come down the cricket-field behind the trees, and we will take two of the fellows with us and have it out, for I am sick of it, and I’ll put up with no more.”
“All right,” said Glyn coolly. “But lock that belt up first at the bottom of your box or where it’s safest.”
“Not I,” cried Singh loftily. “I can’t stop to think of a few rubbishing gems when my honour’s at stake like this.”
“Well,” said Glyn, “if you won’t, I must;” and, crossing to the trunk, he opened it, saw that the belt-case was right down in one corner below some clothes, banged down the lid, locked it up, and offered Singh the keys.
“Bah!” ejaculated the boy, and he turned away.
“Let’s see,” said Glyn, in the most imperturbable, good-humoured way; “we’ll have Burney and one of the other big chaps. I’ll have Burney. What do you say to Slegge?”
Singh made no reply, but stood scowling out of the window.
“But I say, the first thing will be that they will ask what the row’s about. What were we quarrelling for, Singhy?”
There was no reply.
“Oh, I remember,” continued Glyn. “Because I bullied you about showing off with that belt. Well, we can’t say anything about that. What shall we say? Look here, how would it be to go down the field together and fall out all at once, and you hit me, and I’ll hit you back, and then we will rush at one another, calling names, and the fellows will come up to see what’s the matter, and then we will fight.”
“Ur–r–r–r–r–ur!” growled Singh, rushing at him with clenched fists; but as he saw the good-humoured twinkle in his companion’s eyes, the boy stopped short, and his clenched fists dropped to his sides. “You are laughing at me,” he said; “laughing in your nasty, cold-blooded English way.”
“Well, isn’t it enough to make a fellow laugh? Here are you trying to get up a quarrel about nothing, and threatening to break with me, when you know you don’t mean it all the time.”
“I do mean it!” raged out the boy. “For you have insulted me cruelly.”
“Ah, that’s what you say now, Singhy; but before you go to bed to-night you will be as vexed with yourself as can be, and wish you had not said what you have. You will feel then that I have only spoken to you just as the dad would if he had been here. And then what would you have done? Looked at him for a minute like a tiger with its claws all spread out, and the next minute you would have done what you always did do.”
“What was that?” cried the boy fiercely.
“Held out your hand and said, ‘I am sorry. I was wrong.’”
Singh turned away and walked to the window, to stand looking out for a few minutes before turning back; and then he walked up to Glyn and said: “Come down into the cricket-field.”
“To have it out?” said Glyn quietly.
“Oh, Glynny!” cried the boy, and he held out his hand.