he passed his cubicle, and, pausing to throw his sponge and towel down, his eye fell on his bed, and there on the blanket were two black blots of familiar shape.
David gave a great sigh.
“Oh Monarch and missus,” he said affectionately, “you little devils.”
The travelling-carriage of the royalties was to hand, and in a moment the black pair were safe again. How they had got on to his blanket he did not pause to think, and the three cuts due to him were “jolly cheap at the price.” He made but a couple of leaps down the stairs to the bath-room.
“I say, I’ve lost the challenge, Bags,” he said; “but I’ve found the Monarch. He was on my blankets, and so was she. And—I say, I’m sorry I suspected you. When’ll you take your cuts?”
Bags’s inconvenient conscience and affection gave him a nasty prod at this. If David had only not said he was sorry he suspected him, he would not have felt so “beastly.” On the other hand, it was dangerous to try to stifle his internal beastliness by magnanimity, since this might lead to fresh suspicions on David’s part. But magnanimity salted with sarcasm might serve his turn.
“Oh, I don’t want to whack you,” he said, “as you say you were sorry. As if I should have touched your filthy stags! Clip their wings, and take them to Marchester next half, and see if Hughes is proud of his pal who keeps vermin.”
David stared in blank surprise. To forgo the pleasure of chastisement was not in the spirit of Shylock.
“Oh, well, thanks awfully,” he said. “If you don’t want to take your cuts, I’m sure I don’t mind not getting them. But why don’t you?”
Bags was struggling into his shirt, and speech was for the moment extinguished.
“Simply because the challenge was too silly for words,” he said, as his head emerged.
The repetition of this silly reason did exactly that which Bags desired should not happen. Suspicion, vague and unformulated as yet, again sprang up in David’s mind. Such magnanimity was simply childish.
“I think I’ll take the cuts then, Crabtree,” he said, to mark the complete severance of friendly relations.
That roused Bags: the rejection of his spurious, but highly superior, motives quite stifled the prods of his inconvenient conscience.
“All right, then, you shall,” he said. “Gosh! I’ll let into you. I’ll put beef into them, Blaize. I’ve got a racquet-handle that’ll do nicely. I bet I break it. You’ll want some liniment afterwards.”
The ten-minutes bell sounded at this moment, and the boys ran upstairs again to finish dressing and say their prayers. For the last five minutes of these ten they were bound to be on their knees at their bedside, while Glanders patrolled the dormitory. But with care and discreet peeping through fingers it was possible to get through some neglected dressing during the devotional five minutes, and David, who was a good deal behindhand, buttoned his collar, put on his tie, and laced one boot without being detected.
Mr. Dutton was in an unusually docile mood during this hour from seven to eight, and it wanted little penetration on the part of his pupils, when they remembered the visit he had done the Head the honour to pay him last night, to guess the cause of that. David felt chagrin at the fact that he had been detained in the bath-room, and had not been able to take the dismembered yellow-back from the grate, to find out what made the Head so waxy, but there was no doubt that it was the Head who had made Mr. Dutton so mild. Indeed, it had often been a debated question as to which was really the worst, a caning or a proper “jaw” from the Head, for the hardiest were reduced to unwilling tears by the Head’s tongue, when he really chose to apply it, so convincing and dismal a picture could he paint of a boy’s satanic iniquity, and the inevitable ruin that such courses fashioned for him in this world and the next. But it was a point of honour not to cry at any application of the cane after you were twelve; kids might cry, but not elderly persons. The cane might break your hands, and make you set your teeth, but it was not allowable to let it break your spirit. But a “jaw” broke your spirit into smithereens, and no doubt that disintegrating process had happened to old Dubs. Anything in the way of construing was sufficient this morning, and the grammatical questions were mere child’s-play.
It was already ten minutes to eight, and the school sergeant, a whiskered veteran, who visited the different class-rooms during early school, with orders from the Head, and summonses for boys who had been reported, had already passed the museum door without coming in, and David’s heart rose. If Glanders had reported him, it was quite certain that the sergeant would have conveyed the summons that he was to go to the Head after chapel, to his class-room, and yet he had passed without delivering it. From time to time these remissions happened. Glanders occasionally forgot to report, even when she had promised it; sometimes even in the act of complaining, the stoniness of her bosom relented. Then, with a sinking of the heart, proportionally greater owing to its premature uplifting, there was a tap on the door, and the sergeant entered, saluting.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” he said to Mr. Dutton, handing him a small slip of blue paper; “but I forgot this as I went by.”
Mr. Dutton glanced at it.
“Blaize to go to the Head after chapel,” he announced, and David thought he detected a faint smile showing the malicious glee of a fellow-sufferer.
Chapel, usually tedious, was not long enough that morning, and the psalms, the lesson, the hymns, and the prayers passed in a flash. Ferrers, as they went out, administered spurious consolation.
“If you stick your hands in cold water,” he said, “it’ll numb them a bit. I remember, last winter, I held mine in the snow for five minutes, and it didn’t sting nearly so much.”
“And there’s such a sight of snow about in July, isn’t there!” said David bitterly.
Ferrers shrugged his shoulders.
“All right, then,” he said, feeling slightly hurt. “And you’ve got your three cuts from Bags, too, haven’t you? I bet Bags lays on.”
A minute afterwards he was in the awful presence. Even as he entered he heard the jingle of keys, and when he advanced to the table, where its occupant was looking vexed, he saw that the fatal middle drawer was already open. That it could have been opened for any other reason did not strike him; he supposed that his case was already judged.
For the moment the Head seemed unaware of his presence, and continued to read the letter that apparently annoyed him.
“Pish!” he said at length, in a dreadful voice, and, looking up, as he tore it in fragments, saw David.
“Ah, Blaize,” he said, “I sent for you—yes, I want you to answer me a question or two.”
This looked as unpromising as possible. The drawer was already open, but it seemed that a “jaw” was coming first. Why couldn’t he cane him and have done with it, thought the dejected David.
The Head rapped the table sharply.
“Question one,” he said. “Is it the case that my daughters have incurred the wrath of the first form?”
David’s head reeled at the thickness of the troubles.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good.
