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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Politeness of Princes, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Politeness of Princes
+       And Other School Stories
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Posting Date: August 27, 2012 [EBook #8178]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+First Posted: June 26, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POLITENESS OF PRINCES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE POLITENESS OF PRINCES
+and Other School Stories
+
+
+
+By
+P. G. Wodehouse
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: This selection of early Wodehouse stories was
+assembled for Project Gutenberg. The original publication date of
+each story is listed in square brackets in the Table of Contents.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE POLITENESS OF PRINCES [1905]
+
+SHIELDS' AND THE CRICKET CUP [1905]
+
+AN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIR [1905]
+
+THE GUARDIAN [1908]
+
+A CORNER IN LINES [1905]
+
+THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTERS [1905]
+
+PILLINGSHOT, DETECTIVE [1910]
+
+
+
+
+THE POLITENESS OF PRINCES
+
+
+The painful case of G. Montgomery Chapple, bachelor, of Seymour's
+house, Wrykyn. Let us examine and ponder over it.
+
+It has been well said that this is the age of the specialist.
+Everybody, if they wish to leave the world a better and happier place
+for their stay in it, should endeavour to adopt some speciality and
+make it their own. Chapple's speciality was being late for breakfast.
+He was late not once or twice, but every day. Sometimes he would
+scramble in about the time of the second cup of coffee, buttoning his
+waistcoat as he sidled to his place. Generally he would arrive just as
+the rest of the house were filing out; when, having lurked hidden
+until Mr. Seymour was out of the way, he would enter into private
+treaty with Herbert, the factotum, who had influence with the cook,
+for Something Hot and maybe a fresh brew of coffee. For there was
+nothing of the amateur late-breakfaster about Chapple. Your amateur
+slinks in with blushes deepening the naturally healthy hue of his
+face, and, bolting a piece of dry bread and gulping down a cup of cold
+coffee, dashes out again, filled more with good resolutions for the
+future than with food. Not so Chapple. He liked his meals. He wanted a
+good deal here below, and wanted it hot and fresh. Conscience had but
+a poor time when it tried to bully Chapple. He had it weak in the
+first round.
+
+But there was one more powerful than Conscience--Mr. Seymour. He had
+marked the constant lateness of our hero, and disapproved of it.
+
+Thus it happened that Chapple, having finished an excellent breakfast
+one morning some twenty minutes after everybody else, was informed as
+he sat in the junior day-room trying, with the help of an illustrated
+article in a boys' paper, to construct a handy model steam-engine out
+of a reel of cotton and an old note-book--for his was in many ways a
+giant brain--that Mr. Seymour would like to have a friendly chat with
+him in his study. Laying aside his handy model steam-engine, he went
+off to the housemaster's study.
+
+"You were late for breakfast to-day," said Mr. Seymour, in the horrid,
+abrupt way housemasters have.
+
+"Why, yes, sir," said Chapple, pleasantly.
+
+"And the day before."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the day before that."
+
+Chapple did not deny it. He stood on one foot and smiled a
+propitiating smile. So far Mr. Seymour was entitled to demand a cigar
+or cocoanut every time.
+
+The housemaster walked to the window, looked out, returned to the
+mantelpiece, and shifted the position of a china vase two and a
+quarter inches to the left. Chapple, by way of spirited repartee,
+stood on the other leg and curled the disengaged foot round his ankle.
+The conversation was getting quite intellectual.
+
+"You will write out----"
+
+"Sir, please, sir----" interrupted Chapple in an "I-represent-the
+defendant-m'lud" tone of voice.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It's awfully hard to hear the bell from where I sleep, sir."
+
+Owing to the increased numbers of the house this term Chapple had been
+removed from his dormitory proper to a small room some distance away.
+
+"Nonsense. The bell can be heard perfectly well all over the house."
+
+There was reason in what he said. Herbert, who woke the house of a
+morning, did so by ringing a bell. It was a big bell, and he enjoyed
+ringing it. Few sleepers, however sound, could dream on peacefully
+through Herbert's morning solo. After five seconds of it they would
+turn over uneasily. After seven they would sit up. At the end of the
+first quarter of a minute they would be out of bed, and you would be
+wondering where they picked up such expressions.
+
+Chapple murmured wordlessly in reply. He realised that his defence was
+a thin one. Mr. Seymour followed up his advantage.
+
+"You will write a hundred lines of Vergil," he said, "and if you are
+late again to-morrow I shall double them."
+
+Chapple retired.
+
+This, he felt, was a crisis. He had been pursuing his career of
+unpunctuality so long that he had never quite realised that a time
+might come when the authorities would drop on him. For a moment he
+felt that it was impossible, that he could not meet Mr. Seymour's
+wishes in the matter; but the bull-dog pluck of the true Englishman
+caused him to reconsider this. He would at least have a dash at it.
+
+"I'll tell you what to do," said his friend, Brodie, when consulted on
+the point over a quiet pot of tea that afternoon. "You ought to sleep
+without so many things on the bed. How many blankets do you use, for
+instance?"
+
+"I don't know," said Chapple. "As many as they shove on."
+
+It had never occurred to him to reckon up the amount of his bedclothes
+before retiring to rest.
+
+"Well, you take my tip," said Brodie, "and only sleep with one on.
+Then the cold'll wake you in the morning, and you'll get up because
+it'll be more comfortable than staying in bed."
+
+This scientific plan might have worked. In fact, to a certain extent
+it did work. It woke Chapple in the morning, as Brodie had predicted;
+but it woke him at the wrong hour. It is no good springing out of bed
+when there are still three hours to breakfast. When Chapple woke at
+five the next morning, after a series of dreams, the scenes of which
+were laid mainly in the Arctic regions, he first sneezed, then he
+piled upon the bed everything he could find, including his boots, and
+then went to sleep again. The genial warmth oozed through his form, and
+continued to ooze until he woke once more, this time at eight-fifteen.
+Breakfast being at eight, it occurred to him that his position with
+Mr. Seymour was not improved. While he was devoting a few moments'
+profound meditation to this point the genial warmth got in its fell
+work once again. When he next woke, the bell was ringing for school.
+He lowered the world's record for rapid dressing, and was just in time
+to accompany the tail of the procession into the form-room.
+
+"You were late again this morning," said Mr. Seymour, after dinner.
+
+"Yes, sir. I overslebbed myselb, sir," replied Chapple, who was
+suffering from a cold in the head.
+
+"Two hundred lines."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Things had now become serious. It was no good going to Brodie again
+for counsel. Brodie had done for himself, proved himself a fraud, an
+idiot. In fine, a rotter. He must try somebody else. Happy thought.
+Spenlow. It was a cold day, when Spenlow got left behind. He would
+know what to do. _There_ was a chap for you, if you liked! Young,
+mind you, but what a brain! Colossal!
+
+"What _I_ should do," said Spenlow, "is this. I should put my
+watch on half an hour."
+
+"What 'ud be the good of that?"
+
+"Why, don't you see? You'd wake up and find it was ten to eight, say,
+by your watch, so you'd shove on the pace dressing, and nip
+downstairs, and then find that you'd really got tons of time. What
+price that?"
+
+"But I should remember I'd put my watch on," objected Chapple.
+
+"Oh, no, probably not. You'd be half asleep, and you'd shoot out of
+bed before you remembered, and that's all you'd want. It's the getting
+out of bed that's so difficult. If you were once out, you wouldn't
+want to get back again."
+
+"Oh, shouldn't I?" said Chapple.
+
+"Well, you might want to, but you'd have the sense not to do it."
+
+"It's not a bad idea," said Chapple. "Thanks."
+
+That night he took his Waterbury, prised open the face with a
+pocket-knife as if he were opening an oyster, put the minute hand
+on exactly half an hour, and retired to bed satisfied. There was
+going to be no nonsense about it this time.
+
+I am sorry to disappoint the reader, but facts are facts, and I must
+not tamper with them. It is, therefore, my duty to state, however
+reluctantly, that Chapple was not in time for breakfast on the
+following morning. He woke at seven o'clock, when the hands of
+the watch pointed to seven-thirty. Primed with virtuous resolutions,
+he was just about to leap from his couch, when his memory began to
+work, and he recollected that he had still an hour. Punctuality, he
+felt, was an excellent thing, a noble virtue, in fact, but it was no
+good overdoing it. He could give himself at least another half hour.
+So he dozed off. He woke again with something of a start. He seemed
+to feel that he had been asleep for a considerable time. But no. A
+glance at the watch showed the hands pointing to twenty-five to eight.
+Twenty-five minutes more. He had a good long doze this time. Then,
+feeling that now he really must be getting up, he looked once more
+at the watch, and rubbed his eyes. It was still twenty-five to eight.
+
+The fact was that, in the exhilaration of putting the hands on, he had
+forgotten that other and even more important operation, winding up.
+The watch had stopped.
+
+There are few more disturbing sensations than that of suddenly
+discovering that one has no means of telling the time. This is
+especially so when one has to be in a certain place by a certain hour.
+It gives the discoverer a weird, lost feeling, as if he had stopped
+dead while all the rest of the world had moved on at the usual rate.
+It is a sensation not unlike that of the man who arrives on the
+platform of a railway station just in time to see the tail-end of his
+train disappear.
+
+Until that morning the world's record for dressing (set up the day
+before) had been five minutes, twenty-three and a fifth seconds. He
+lowered this by two seconds, and went downstairs.
+
+The house was empty. In the passage that led to the dining-room he
+looked at the clock, and his heart turned a somersault. _It was five
+minutes past nine._ Not only was he late for breakfast, but late
+for school, too. Never before had he brought off the double event.
+
+There was a little unpleasantness in his form room when he stole in at
+seven minutes past the hour. Mr. Dexter, his form-master, never a
+jolly sort of man to have dealings with, was rather bitter on the
+subject.
+
+"You are incorrigibly lazy and unpunctual," said Mr. Dexter, towards
+the end of the address. "You will do me a hundred lines."
+
+"Oo-o-o, sir-r," said Chapple. But he felt at the time that it was not
+much of a repartee. After dinner there was the usual interview with
+Mr. Seymour.
+
+"You were late again this morning," he said.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Chapple.
+
+"Two hundred lines."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The thing was becoming monotonous.
+
+Chapple pulled himself together. This must stop. He had said that
+several times previously, but now he meant it. Nor poppy, nor
+mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world should make him
+oversleep himself again. This time he would try a combination of
+schemes.
+
+Before he went to bed that night he put his watch on half an hour,
+wound it up, and placed it on a chair at his bedside. Then he seized
+his rug and all the blankets except one, and tore them off. Then he
+piled them in an untidy heap in the most distant corner of the room.
+He meant to put temptation out of his reach. There should be no genial
+warmth on this occasion.
+
+Nor was there. He woke at six feeling as if he were one solid chunk of
+ice. He put up with it in a torpid sort of way till seven. Then he
+could stand it no longer. It would not be pleasant getting up and
+going downstairs to the cheerless junior day-room, but it was the only
+thing to do. He knew that if he once wrapped himself in the blankets
+which stared at him invitingly from the opposite corner of the room,
+he was lost. So he crawled out of bed, shivering, washed
+unenthusiastically, and he proceeded to put on his clothes.
+
+Downstairs it was more unpleasant than one would have believed
+possible. The day-room was in its usual state of disorder. The fire
+was not lit. There was a vague smell of apples. Life was very, very
+grey. There seemed no brightness in it at all.
+
+He sat down at the table and began once more the task of constructing
+a handy model steam-engine, but he speedily realised, what he had
+suspected before, that the instructions were the work of a dangerous
+madman. What was the good of going on living when gibbering lunatics
+were allowed to write for weekly papers?
+
+About this time his gloom was deepened by the discovery that a tin
+labelled mixed biscuits, which he had noticed in Brodie's locker, was
+empty.
+
+He thought he would go for a stroll. It would be beastly, of course,
+but not so beastly as sitting in the junior day-room.
+
+It is just here that the tragedy begins to deepen.
+
+Passing out of Seymour's gate he met Brooke, of Appleby's. Brooke wore
+an earnest, thoughtful expression.
+
+"Hullo, Brooke," said Chapple, "where are you off to?"
+
+It seemed that Brooke was off to the carpenter's shop. Hence the
+earnest, thoughtful expression. His mind was wrestling with certain
+pieces of wood which he proposed to fashion into photograph frames.
+There was always a steady demand in the school for photograph frames,
+and the gifted were in the habit of turning here and there an honest
+penny by means of them.
+
+The artist soul is not always unfavourable to a gallery. Brooke said
+he didn't mind if Chapple came along, only he wasn't to go rotting
+about or anything. So Chapple went along.
+
+Arrived at the carpenter's shop, Brooke was soon absorbed in his
+labours. Chapple watched him for a time with the interest of a
+brother-worker, for had he not tried to construct handy model
+steam-engines in his day? Indeed, yes. After a while, however, the
+_role_ of spectator began to pall. He wanted to _do_ something.
+Wandering round the room he found a chisel, and upon the instant,
+in direct contravention of the treaty respecting rotting, he sat down
+and started carving his name on a smooth deal board which looked
+as if nobody wanted it. The pair worked on in silence, broken only
+by an occasional hard breath as the toil grew exciting. Chapple's
+tongue was out and performing mystic evolutions as he carved the
+letters. He felt inspired.
+
+He was beginning the A when he was brought to earth again by the voice
+of Brooke.
+
+"You _are_ an idiot," said Brooke, complainingly. "That's
+_my_ board, and now you've spoilt it."
+
+Spoilt it! Chapple liked that! Spoilt it, if you please, when he had
+done a beautiful piece of carving on it!
+
+"Well, it can't be helped now," said Brooke, philosophically. "I
+suppose it's not your fault you're such an ass. Anyhow, come on now.
+It's struck eight."
+
+"It's what?" gasped Chapple.
+
+"Struck eight. But it doesn't matter. Appleby never minds one being a
+bit late for breakfast."
+
+"Oh," said Chapple. "Oh, doesn't he!"
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+Go into Seymour's at eight sharp any morning and look down the table,
+and you will see the face of G. M. Chapple--obscured every now and
+then, perhaps, by a coffee cup or a slice of bread and marmalade. He
+has not been late for three weeks. The spare room is now occupied by
+Postlethwaite, of the Upper Fourth, whose place in Milton's dormitory
+has been taken by Chapple. Milton is the head of the house, and stands
+alone among the house prefects for the strenuousness of his methods in
+dealing with his dormitory. Nothing in this world is certain, but it
+is highly improbable that Chapple will be late again. There are
+swagger-sticks.
+
+
+
+
+SHIELDS' AND THE CRICKET CUP
+
+
+The house cricket cup at Wrykyn has found itself on some strange
+mantelpieces in its time. New talent has a way of cropping up in the
+house matches. Tail-end men hit up fifties, and bowlers who have never
+taken a wicket before except at the nets go on fifth change, and
+dismiss first eleven experts with deliveries that bounce twice and
+shoot. So that nobody is greatly surprised in the ordinary run of
+things if the cup does not go to the favourites, or even to the second
+or third favourites. But one likes to draw the line. And Wrykyn drew
+it at Shields'. And yet, as we shall proceed to show, Shields' once
+won the cup, and that, too, in a year when Donaldson's had four first
+eleven men and Dexter's three.
+
+Shields' occupied a unique position at the School. It was an
+absolutely inconspicuous house. There were other houses that were
+slack or wild or both, but the worst of these did something. Shields'
+never did anything. It never seemed to want to do anything. This may
+have been due in some degree to Mr. Shields. As the housemaster is, so
+the house is. He was the most inconspicuous master on the staff. He
+taught a minute form in the junior school, where earnest infants
+wrestled with somebody's handy book of easy Latin sentences, and
+depraved infants threw cunningly compounded ink-balls at one another
+and the ceiling. After school he would range the countryside with a
+pickle-bottle in search of polly woggles and other big game, which he
+subsequently transferred to slides and examined through a microscope
+till an advanced hour of the night. The curious part of the matter
+was that his house was never riotous. Perhaps he was looked on as a
+non-combatant, one whom it would be unfair and unsporting to rag. At
+any rate, a weird calm reigned over the place; and this spirit seemed
+to permeate the public lives of the Shieldsites. They said nothing much
+and they did nothing much and they were very inoffensive. As a rule,
+one hardly knew they were there.
+
+Into this abode of lotus-eaters came Clephane, a day boy, owing to the
+departure of his parents for India. Clephane wanted to go to
+Donaldson's. In fact, he said so. His expressions, indeed, when he
+found that the whole thing had been settled, and that he was to spend
+his last term at school at a house which had never turned out so much
+as a member of the Gym. Six, bordered on the unfilial. It appeared
+that his father had met Mr. Shields at dinner in the town--a fact to
+which he seemed to attach a mystic importance. Clephane's criticism of
+this attitude of mind was of such a nature as to lead his father to
+address him as Archibald instead of Archie.
+
+However, the thing was done, and Clephane showed his good sense by
+realising this and turning his energetic mind to the discovery of the
+best way of making life at Shields' endurable. Fortune favoured him by
+sending to the house another day boy, one Mansfield. Clephane had not
+known him intimately before, though they were both members of the
+second eleven; but at Shields' they instantly formed an alliance. And
+in due season--or a little later--the house matches began. Henfrey, of
+Day's, the Wrykyn cricket captain, met Clephane at the nets when the
+drawing for opponents had been done.
+
+"Just the man I wanted to see," said Henfrey. "I suppose you're
+captain of Shields' lot, Clephane? Well, you're going to scratch as
+usual, I suppose?"
+
+For the last five seasons that lamentable house had failed to put a
+team into the field. "You'd better," said Henfrey, "we haven't
+overmuch time as it is. That match with Paget's team has thrown us out
+a lot. We ought to have started the house matches a week ago."
+
+"Scratch!" said Clephane. "Don't you wish we would! My good chap,
+we're going to get the cup."
+
+"You needn't be a funny ass," said Henfrey in his complaining voice,
+"we really are awfully pushed. As it is we shall have to settle the
+opening rounds on the first innings. That's to say, we can only give
+'em a day each; if they don't finish, the winner of the first innings
+wins. You might as well scratch."
+
+"I can't help your troubles. By rotten mismanagement you have got the
+house-matches crowded up into the last ten days of term, and you come
+and expect me to sell a fine side like Shields' to get you out of the
+consequences of your reckless act. My word, Henfrey, you've sunk
+pretty low. Nice young fellow Henfrey was at one time, but seems to
+have got among bad companions. Quite changed now. Avoid him as much as
+I can. Leave me, Henfrey, I would be alone."
+
+"But you can't raise a team."
+
+"Raise a team! Do you happen to know that half the house is
+_biting_ itself with agony because we can't find room for all?
+Shields gives stump-cricket _soirees_ in his study after prep.
+One every time you hit the ball, two into the bowl of goldfish, and
+out if you smash the microscope."
+
+"Well," said Henfrey viciously, "if you want to go through the farce
+of playing one round and making idiots of yourselves, you'll have to
+wait a bit. You've got a bye in the first round."
+
+Clephane told the news to Mansfield after tea. "I've been and let the
+house in for a rollicking time," he said, abstracting the copy of
+Latin verses which his friend was doing, and sitting on them to ensure
+undivided attention to his words. "Wanting to score off old Henfrey--I
+have few pleasures--I told him that Shields' was not going to scratch.
+So we are booked to play in the second round of the housers. We drew a
+bye for the first. It would be an awful rag if we could do something.
+We _must_ raise a team of some sort. Henfrey would score so if we
+didn't. Who's there, d'you think, that can play?"
+
+Mansfield considered the question thoughtfully. "They all _play_,
+I suppose," he said slowly, "if you can call it playing. What I mean
+to say is, cricket's compulsory here, so I suppose they've all had an
+innings or two at one time or another in the eightieth game or so. But
+if you want record-breakers, I shouldn't trust to Shields' too much."
+
+"Not a bit. So long as we put a full team into the field, that's all I
+care about. I've often wondered what it's like to go in first and bowl
+unchanged the whole time."
+
+"You'll do that all right," said Mansfield. "I should think Shields'
+bowling ran to slow grubs, to judge from the look of 'em. You'd better
+go and see Wilkins about raising the team. As head of the house, he
+probably considers himself captain of cricket."
+
+Wilkins, however, took a far more modest view of his position. The
+notion of leading a happy band of cricketers from Shields' into the
+field had, it seemed, small attractions for him. But he went so far as
+to get a house list, and help choose a really representative team. And
+as details about historic teams are always welcome, we may say that
+the averages ranged from 3.005 to 8.14. This last was Wilkins' own and
+was, as he would have been the first to admit, substantially helped by
+a contribution of nineteen in a single innings in the fifth game.
+
+So the team was selected, and Clephane turned out after school next
+day to give them a little fielding-practice. To his surprise the
+fielding was not so outrageous as might have been expected. All the
+simpler catches were held, and one or two of the harder as well. Given
+this form on the day of their appearance in public, and Henfrey might
+be disappointed when he came to watch and smile sarcastically. A
+batting fiasco is not one half so ridiculous as maniac fielding.
+
+In the meantime the first round of the house matches had been played
+off, and it would be as well to describe at this point the positions
+of the rival houses and their prospects. In the first place, there
+were only four teams really in the running for the cup, Day's (headed
+by the redoubtable Henfrey), Spence's, who had Jackson, that season a
+head and shoulders above the other batsmen in the first eleven--he had
+just wound up the school season with an average of 51.3, Donaldson's,
+and Dexter's. All the other house teams were mainly tail.
+
+Now, in the first round the powerful quartette had been diminished by
+the fact that Donaldson's had drawn Dexter's, and had lost to them by
+a couple of wickets.
+
+For the second round Shields' drew Appleby's, a poor team. Space on
+the Wrykyn field being a consideration, with three house matches to be
+played off at the same time, Clephane's men fought their first battle
+on rugged ground in an obscure corner. As the captain of cricket
+ordered these matters, Henfrey had naturally selected the best bit of
+turf for Day's _v_. Dexter's. That section of the ground which
+was sacred to the school second-eleven matches was allotted to
+Spence's _v_. the School House. The idle public divided its
+attention between the two big games, and paid no attention to the
+death struggle in progress at the far end of the field. Whereby it
+missed a deal of quiet fun.
+
+I say death struggle advisedly. Clephane had won his second-eleven cap
+as a fast bowler. He had failed to get into the first eleven because
+he was considered too erratic. Put these two facts together, and you
+will suspect that dark deeds were wrought on the men of Appleby in
+that lonely corner of the Wrykyn meadow.
+
+The pitch was not a good one. As a sample of the groundman's art it
+was sketchy and amateurish; it lacked finish. Clephane won the toss,
+took a hasty glance at the corrugated turf, and decided to bat first.
+The wicket was hardly likely to improve with use.
+
+He and Mansfield opened the batting. He stood three feet out of his
+ground, and smote. The first four balls he took full pitch. The last
+two, owing to a passion for variety on the part of the bowler, were
+long hops. At the end of the over Shields' score was twenty-four.
+Mansfield pursued the same tactics. When the first wicket fell,
+seventy was on the board. A spirit of martial enthusiasm pervaded
+the ranks of the house team. Mild youths with spectacles leaped out
+of their ground like tigers, and snicked fours through the slips.
+When the innings concluded, blood had been spilt--from an injured
+finger--but the total was a hundred and two.
+
+Then Clephane walked across to the School shop for a vanilla ice. He
+said he could get more devil, as it were, into his bowling after a
+vanilla ice. He had a couple.
+
+When he bowled his first ball it was easy to see that there was truth
+in the report of the causes of his inclusion in the second eleven and
+exclusion from the first. The batsman observed somewhat weakly, "Here,
+I _say!_" and backed towards square leg. The ball soared over the
+wicket-keep's head and went to the boundary. The bowler grinned
+pleasantly, and said he was just getting his arm in.
+
+The second ball landed full-pitch on the batsman's right thigh. The
+third was another full pitch, this time on the top of the middle
+stump, which it smashed. With profound satisfaction the batsman
+hobbled to the trees, and sat down. "Let somebody else have a shot,"
+he said kindly.
+
+Appleby's made twenty-eight that innings.
+
+Their defeat by an innings and fifty-three runs they attributed
+subsequently to the fact that only seven of the team could be induced
+to go to the wickets in the second venture.
+
+"So you've managed to win a match," grunted Henfrey, "I should like to
+have been there."
+
+"You might just as well have been," said Clephane, "from what they
+tell me."
+
+At which Henfrey became abusive, for he had achieved an "egg" that
+afternoon, and missed a catch; which things soured him, though Day's
+had polished off Dexter's handsomely.
+
+"Well," he said at length, "you're in the semi-final now, of all weird
+places. You'd better play Spence's next. When can you play?"
+
+"Henfrey," said Clephane, "I have a bright, open, boyish countenance,
+but I was not born yesterday. You want to get a dangerous rival out of
+the way without trouble, so you set Shields' to smash up Spence's. No,
+Henfrey. I do not intend to be your catspaw. We will draw lots who is
+to play which. Here comes Jackson. We'll toss odd man out."
+
+And when the coins fell there were two tails and one head; and the
+head belonged to the coin of Clephane.
+
+"So, you see," he said to Henfrey, "Shields' is in the final. No
+wonder you wanted us to scratch."
+
+I should like this story to end with a vivid description of a tight
+finish. Considering that Day's beat Spence's, and consequently met
+Shields' in the final, that would certainly be the most artistic
+ending. Henfrey batting--Clephane bowling--one to tie, two to win, one
+wicket to fall. Up goes the ball! Will the lad catch it!! He fumbles
+it. It falls. All is over. But look! With a supreme effort--and so on.
+
+The real conclusion was a little sensational in its way, but not
+nearly so exciting as that.
+
+The match between Day's and Shields' opened in a conventional enough
+manner. Day's batted first, and made two hundred and fifty. Henfrey
+carried his bat for seventy-six, and there were some thirties. For
+Shields' Clephane and Mansfield made their usual first-wicket stand,
+and the rest brought the total up to ninety-eight. At this point
+Henfrey introduced a variation on custom. The match was a three days'
+match. In fact, owing to the speed with which the other games had been
+played, it could, if necessary, last four days. The follow-on was,
+therefore, a matter for the discretion of the side which led. Henfrey
+and his team saw no reason why they should not have another pleasant
+spell of batting before dismissing their opponents for the second time
+and acquiring the cup. So in they went again, and made another two
+hundred and fifty odd, Shields' being left with four hundred and
+twelve to make to win.
+
+On the morning after Day's second innings, a fag from Day's brought
+Clephane a message from Henfrey. Henfrey was apparently in bed. He
+would be glad if Clephane would go and see him in the dinner-hour. The
+interview lasted fifteen minutes. Then Clephane burst out of the
+house, and dashed across to Shields' in search of Mansfield.
+
+"I say, _have_ you heard?" he shouted.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+"Why, every man in Day's team, bar two kids, is in bed. Ill. Do you
+mean to say you haven't heard? They thought they'd got that house cup
+safe, so all the team except the two kids, fags, you know, had a feed
+in honour of it in Henfrey's study. Some ass went and bought a bad
+rabbit pie, and now they're laid up. Not badly, but they won't be out
+for a day or two."
+
+"But what about the match?"
+
+"Oh, that'll go on. I made a point of that. They can play subs."
+
+Mansfield looked thoughtful.
+
+"But I say," he said, "it isn't very sporting, is it? Oughtn't we to
+wait or something?"
+
+"Sporting! My dear chap, a case like this mustn't be judged by
+ordinary standards. We can't spoil the giant rag of the century
+because it isn't quite sporting. Think what it means--Shields' getting
+the cup! It'll keep the school laughing for terms. What do you want to
+spoil people's pleasure for?"
+
+"Oh, all right," said Mansfield.
+
+"Besides, think of the moral effect it'll have on the house. It may
+turn it into the blood house of Wrykyn. Shields himself may get quite
+sportive. We mustn't miss the chance."
+
+The news having got about the school, Clephane and Mansfield opened
+their second innings to the somewhat embarrassed trundling of Masters
+Royce and Tibbit, of the Junior School, before a substantial and
+appreciative audience.
+
+Both played carefully at first, but soon getting the measure of the
+bowling (which was not deep) began to hit out, and runs came quickly.
+At fifty, Tibbit, understudying Henfrey as captain of the side,
+summoned to his young friend Todby from short leg, and instructed him
+to "have a go" at the top end.
+
+It was here that Clephane courteously interfered. Substitutes, he
+pointed out, were allowed, by the laws of cricket, only to field, not
+to bowl. He must, therefore, request friend Todby to return to his
+former sphere of utility, where, he added politely, he was a perfect
+demon.
+
+"But, blow it," said Master Tibbit, who (alas!) was addicted to the
+use of strong language, "Royce and I can't bowl the whole blessed
+time."
+
+"You'll have to, I'm afraid," said Clephane with the kindly air of a
+doctor soothing a refractory patient. "Of course, you can take a spell
+at grubs whenever you like."
+
+"Oh, darn!" said Master Tibbit.
+
+Shortly afterwards Clephane made his century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The match ended late on the following afternoon in a victory for
+Shields' by nine wickets, and the scene at the School Shop when Royce
+and Tibbit arrived to drown their sorrows and moisten their dry
+throats with ginger beer is said by eyewitnesses to have been
+something quite out of the common run.
+
+The score sheet of the match is also a little unusual. Clephane's
+three hundred and one (not out) is described in the _Wrykinian_
+as a "masterly exhibition of sound yet aggressive batting." How
+Henfrey described it we have never heard.
+
+
+
+
+AN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIR
+
+
+PART 1
+
+The whole thing may be said to have begun when Mr. Oliver Ring of New
+York, changing cars, as he called it, at Wrykyn on his way to London,
+had to wait an hour for his train. He put in that hour by strolling
+about the town and seeing the sights, which were not numerous. Wrykyn,
+except on Market Day, was wont to be wrapped in a primaeval calm which
+very nearly brought tears to the strenuous eyes of the man from
+Manhattan. He had always been told that England was a slow country, and
+his visit, now in its third week, had confirmed this opinion: but even
+in England he had not looked to find such a lotus-eating place as
+Wrykyn. He looked at the shop windows. They resembled the shop windows
+of every other country town in England. There was no dash, no initiative
+about them. They did not leap to the eye and arrest the pedestrian's
+progress. They ordered these things, thought Mr. Ring, better in the
+States. And then something seemed to whisper to him that here was the
+place to set up a branch of Ring's Come-One Come-All Up-to-date Stores.
+During his stroll he had gathered certain pieces of information. To wit,
+that Wrykyn was where the county families for ten miles round did their
+shopping, that the population of the town was larger than would appear
+at first sight to a casual observer, and, finally, that there was a
+school of six hundred boys only a mile away. Nothing could be better.
+Within a month he would take to himself the entire trade of the
+neighbourhood.
+
+"It's a cinch," murmured Mr. Ring with a glad smile, as he boarded his
+train, "a lead-pipe cinch."
+
+Everybody who has moved about the world at all knows Ring's Come-one
+Come-all Up-to-date Stores. The main office is in New York. Broadway,
+to be exact, on the left as you go down, just before you get to Park
+Row, where the newspapers come from. There is another office in
+Chicago. Others in St. Louis, St. Paul, and across the seas in London,
+Paris, Berlin, and, in short, everywhere. The peculiar advantage about
+Ring's Stores is that you can get anything you happen to want there,
+from a motor to a macaroon, and rather cheaper than you could get it
+anywhere else. England had up to the present been ill-supplied with
+these handy paradises, the one in Piccadilly being the only extant
+specimen. But now Mr. Ring in person had crossed the Atlantic on a
+tour of inspection, and things were shortly to be so brisk that you
+would be able to hear them whizz.
+
+So an army of workmen invaded Wrykyn. A trio of decrepit houses in the
+High Street were pulled down with a run, and from the ruins there
+began to rise like a Phoenix the striking building which was to be the
+Wrykyn Branch of Ring's Come-one Come-all Up-to-date Stores.
+
+The sensation among the tradesmen caused by the invasion was, as may
+be imagined, immense and painful. The thing was a public disaster. It
+resembled the advent of a fox in a fowl-run. For years the tradesmen
+of Wrykyn had jogged along in their comfortable way, each making his
+little profits, with no thought of competition or modern hustle. And
+now the enemy was at their doors. Many were the gloomy looks cast at
+the gaudy building as it grew like a mushroom. It was finished with
+incredible speed, and then advertisements began to flood the local
+papers. A special sheaf of bills was despatched to the school.
+
+Dunstable got hold of one, and read it with interest. Then he went in
+search of his friend Linton to find out what he thought of it.
+
+Linton was at work in the laboratory. He was an enthusiastic, but
+unskilful, chemist. The only thing he could do with any real certainty
+was to make oxygen. But he had ambitions beyond that feat, and was
+continually experimenting in a reckless way which made the chemistry
+master look wan and uneasy. He was bending over a complicated mixture
+of tubes, acids, and Bunsen burners when Dunstable found him. It was
+after school, so that the laboratory was empty, but for them.
+
+"Don't mind me," said Dunstable, taking a seat on the table.
+
+"Look out, man, don't jog. Sit tight, and I'll broaden your mind for
+you. I take this bit of litmus paper, and dip it into this bilge, and
+if I've done it right, it'll turn blue."
+
+"Then I bet it doesn't," said Dunstable.
+
+The paper turned red.
+
+"Hades," said Linton calmly. "Well, I'm not going to sweat at it any
+more. Let's go down to Cook's."
+
+Cook's is the one school institution which nobody forgets who has been
+to Wrykyn. It is a little confectioner's shop in the High Street. Its
+exterior is somewhat forbidding, and the uninitiated would probably
+shudder and pass on, wondering how on earth such a place could find a
+public daring enough to support it by eating its wares. But the school
+went there in flocks. Tea at Cook's was the alternative to a study
+tea. There was a large room at the back of the shop, and here oceans
+of hot tea and tons of toast were consumed. The staff of Cook's
+consisted of Mr. Cook, late sergeant in a line regiment, six foot
+three, disposition amiable, left leg cut off above the knee by a
+spirited Fuzzy in the last Soudan war; Mrs. Cook, wife of the above,
+disposition similar, and possessing the useful gift of being able to
+listen to five people at one and the same time; and an invisible
+menial, or menials, who made toast in some nether region at a
+perfectly dizzy rate of speed. Such was Cook's.
+
+"Talking of Cook's," said Dunstable, producing his pamphlet, "have you
+seen this? It'll be a bit of a knock-out for them, I should think."
+
+Linton took the paper, and began to read. Dunstable roamed curiously
+about the laboratory, examining things.
+
+"What are these little crystal sort of bits of stuff?" he asked,
+coming to a standstill before a large jar and opening it. "They look
+good to eat. Shall I try one?"
+
+"Don't you be an idiot," said the expert, looking up. "What have you
+got hold of? Great Scott, no, don't eat that stuff."
+
+"Why not? Is it poison?"
+
+"No. But it would make you sick as a cat. It's Sal Ammoniac."
+
+"Sal how much?"
+
+"Ammoniac. You'd be awfully bad."
+
+"All right, then, I won't. Well, what do you think of that thing?
+It'll be rough on Cook's, won't it? You see they advertise a special
+'public-school' tea, as they call it. It sounds jolly good. I don't
+know what buckwheat cakes are, but they ought to be decent. I suppose
+now everybody'll chuck Cook's and go there. It's a beastly shame,
+considering that Cook's has been a sort of school shop so long. And
+they really depend on the school. At least, one never sees anybody
+else going there. Well, I shall stick to Cook's. I don't want any of
+your beastly Yankee invaders. Support home industries. Be a patriot.
+The band then played God Save the King, and the meeting dispersed.
+But, seriously, man, I am rather sick about this. The Cooks are such
+awfully good sorts, and this is bound to make them lose a tremendous
+lot. The school's simply crawling with chaps who'd do anything to get
+a good tea cheaper than they're getting now. They'll simply scrum in
+to this new place."
+
+"Well, I don't see what we can do," said Linton, "except keep on going
+to Cook's ourselves. Let's be going now, by the way. We'll get as many
+chaps as we can to promise to stick to them. But we can't prevent the
+rest going where they like. Come on."
+
+The atmosphere at Cook's that evening was heavily charged with gloom.
+ExSergeant Cook, usually a treasury of jest and anecdote, was silent
+and thoughtful. Mrs. Cook bustled about with her customary vigour, but
+she too was disinclined for conversation. The place was ominously
+empty. A quartette of school house juniors in one corner and a
+solitary prefect from Donaldson's completed the sum of the customers.
+Nobody seemed to want to talk a great deal. There was something in the
+air which
+
+    _said as plain as whisper in the ear,
+    "The place is haunted._"
+
+and so it was. Haunted by the spectre of that hideous, new, glaring
+red-brick building down the street, which had opened its doors to the
+public on the previous afternoon.
+
+"Look there," said Dunstable, as they came out. He pointed along the
+street. The doors of the new establishment were congested. A crowd,
+made up of members of various houses, was pushing to get past another
+crowd which was trying to get out. The "public-school tea at one
+shilling" appeared to have proved attractive.
+
+"Look at 'em," said Dunstable. "Sordid beasts! All they care about is
+filling themselves. There goes that man Merrett. Rand-Brown with him.
+Here come four more. Come on. It makes me sick."
+
+"I wish it would make _them_ sick," said Linton.
+
+"Perhaps it will.... By George!"
+
+He started.
+
+"What's up?" said Linton.
+
+"Oh, nothing. I was only thinking of something."
+
+They walked on without further conversation. Dunstable's brain was
+working fast. He had an idea, and was busy developing it.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+The manager of the Wrykyn Branch of Ring's Come-one Come-all Stores
+stood at the entrance to his shop on the following afternoon spitting
+with energy and precision on to the pavement--he was a free-born
+American citizen--and eyeing the High Street as a monarch might gaze
+at his kingdom. He had just completed a highly satisfactory report to
+headquarters, and was feeling contented with the universe, and the way
+in which it was managed. Even in the short time since the opening of
+the store he had managed to wake up the sluggish Britishers as if they
+had had an electric shock.
+
+"We," he observed epigrammatically to a passing cat, which had stopped
+on its way to look at him, "are it."
+
+As he spoke he perceived a youth coming towards him down the street.
+He wore a cap of divers colours, from which the manager argued that
+he belonged to the school. Evidently a devotee of the advertised
+"public-school" shillingsworth, and one who, as urged by the small
+bills, had come early to avoid the rush. "Step right in, mister," he
+said, moving aside from the doorway. "And what can I do for _you_?"
+
+"Are you the manager of this place?" asked Dunstable--for the youth
+was that strategist, and no other.
+
+"On the bull's eye first time," replied the manager with easy
+courtesy. "Will you take a cigar or a cocoa-nut?"
+
+"Can I have a bit of a talk with you, if you aren't busy?"
+
+"Sure. Step right in."
+
+"Now, sir," said the manager, "what's _your_ little trouble?"
+
+"It's about this public school tea business," said Dunstable. "It's
+rather a shame, you see. Before you came bargeing in, everybody used
+to go to Cook's."
+
+"And now," interrupted the manager, "they come to us. Correct, sir. We
+_are_ the main stem. And why not?"
+
+"Cook's such a good sort."
+
+"I should like to know him," said the manager politely.
+
+"You see," said Dunstable, "it doesn't so much matter about the other
+things you sell; but Cook's simply relies on giving fellows tea in the
+afternoon----"
+
+"One moment, sir," said the man from the States. "Let me remind you of
+a little rule which will be useful to you when you butt into the big,
+cold world. That is, never let sentiment interfere with business. See?
+Either Ring's Stores or your friend has got to be on top, and, if I
+know anything, it's going to be We. We! And I'm afraid that's all I
+can do for you, unless you've that hungry feeling, and want to sample
+our public-school tea at twenty-five cents."
+
+"No, thanks," said Dunstable. "Here come some chaps, though, who look
+as if they might."
+
+He stepped aside as half a dozen School House juniors raced up.
+
+"For one day only," said the manager to Dunstable, "you may partake
+free, if you care to. You have man's most priceless possession, Cool
+Cheek. And Cool Cheek, when recognised, should not go unrewarded. Step
+in."
+
+"No thanks," said Dunstable. "You'll find me at Cook's if you want
+me."
+
+"Kindness," said he to himself, as Mrs. Cook served him in the
+depressed way which had now become habitual with her, "kindness having
+failed, we must try severity."
+
+
+PART 2
+
+Those who knew and liked Dunstable were both pained and disgusted at
+his behaviour during the ensuing three days. He suddenly exhibited a
+weird fondness for some of Wrykyn's least deserving inmates. He walked
+over to school with Merrett, of Seymour's, and Ruthven, of
+Donaldson's, both notorious outsiders. When Linton wanted him to come
+and play fives after school, he declined on the ground that he was
+teaing with Chadwick, of Appleby's. Now in the matter of absolute
+outsiderishness Chadwick, of Appleby's, was to Merrett, of Seymour's,
+as captain is to subaltern. Linton was horrified, and said so.
+
+"What do you want to do it for?" he asked. "What's the point of it?
+You can't like those chaps."
+
+"Awfully good sorts when you get to know them," said Dunstable.
+
+"You've been some time finding it out."
+
+"I know. Chadwick's an acquired taste. By the way, I'm giving a tea on
+Thursday. Will you come?"
+
+"Who's going to be there?" inquired Linton warily.
+
+"Well, Chadwick for one; and Merrett and Ruthven and three other
+chaps."
+
+"Then," said Linton with some warmth, "I think you'll have to do
+without me. I believe you're mad."
+
+And he went off in disgust to the fives-courts.
+
+When on the following Thursday Dunstable walked into Ring's Stores
+with his five guests, and demanded six public-school teas, the manager
+was perhaps justified in allowing a triumphant smile to wander across
+his face. It was a signal victory for him.  "No free list to-day,
+sir," he said. "Entirely suspended."
+
+"Never mind," said Dunstable, "I'm good for six shillings."
+
+"Free list?" said Merrett, as the manager retired, "I didn't know
+there was one."
+
+"There isn't. Only he and I palled up so much the other day that he
+offered me a tea for nothing."
+
+"Didn't you take it?"
+
+"No. I went to Cook's."
+
+"Rotten hole, Cook's. I'm never going there again," said Chadwick.
+"You take my tip, Dun, old chap, and come here."
+
+"Dun, old chap," smiled amiably.
+
+"I don't know," he said, looking up from the tea-pot, into which he
+had been pouring water; "you can be certain of the food at Cook's."
+
+"What do you mean? So you can here."
+
+"Oh," said Dunstable, "I didn't know. I've never had tea here before.
+But I've often heard that American food upsets one sometimes."
+
+By this time, the tea having stood long enough, he poured out, and the
+meal began.
+
+Merrett and his friends were hearty feeders, and conversation
+languished for some time. Then Chadwick leaned back in his chair, and
+breathed heavily.
+
+"You couldn't get stuff like that at Cook's," he said.
+
+"I suppose it is a bit different," said Dunstable. "Have any of
+you ... noticed something queer...?"
+
+Merrett stared at Ruthven. Ruthven stared at Merrett.
+
+"I...." said Merrett.
+
+"D'you know...." said Ruthven.
+
+Chadwick's face was a delicate green.
+
+"I believe," said Dunstable, "the stuff ... was ... poisoned. I...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Drink this," said the school doctor, briskly, bending over
+Dunstable's bed with a medicine-glass in his hand, "and be ashamed of
+yourself. The fact is you've over-eaten yourself. Nothing more and
+nothing less. Why can't you boys be content to feed moderately?"
+
+"I don't think I ate much, sir," protested Dunstable. "It must have
+been what I ate. I went to that new American place."
+
+"So _you_ went there, too? Why, I've just come from attending a
+bilious boy in Mr. Seymour's house. He said he had been at the
+American place, too."
+
+"Was that Merrett, sir? He was one of the party. We were all bad. We
+can't all have eaten too much."
+
+The doctor looked thoughtful.
+
+"H'm. Curious. Very curious. Do you remember what you had?"
+
+"I had some things the man called buckwheat cakes, with some stuff he
+said was maple syrup."
+
+"Bah. American trash." The doctor was a staunch Briton, conservative
+in his views both on politics and on food. "Why can't you boys eat
+good English food? I must tell the headmaster of this. I haven't time
+to look after the school if all the boys are going to poison
+themselves. You lie still and try to go to sleep, and you'll be right
+enough in no time."
+
+But Dunstable did not go to sleep. He stayed awake to interview
+Linton, who came to pay him a visit.
+
+"Well," said Linton, looking down at the sufferer with an expression
+that was a delicate blend of pity and contempt, "you've made a nice
+sort of ass of yourself, haven't you! I don't know if it's any
+consolation to you, but Merrett's just as bad as you are. And I hear
+the others are, too. So now you see what comes of going to Ring's
+instead of Cook's."
+
+"And now," said Dunstable, "if you've quite finished, you can listen
+to me for a bit...."
+
+"So now you know," he concluded.
+
+Linton's face beamed with astonishment and admiration.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged," he said. "You're a marvel. But how did you know it
+wouldn't poison you?"
+
+"I relied on you. You said it wasn't poison when I asked you in the
+lab. My faith in you is touching."
+
+"But why did you take any yourself?"
+
+"Sort of idea of diverting suspicion. But the thing isn't finished
+yet. Listen."
+
+Linton left the dormitory five minutes later with a look of a young
+disciple engaged on some holy mission.
+
+
+PART 3
+
+"You think the food is unwholesome, then?" said the headmaster after
+dinner that night.
+
+"Unwholesome!" said the school doctor. "It must be deadly. It must be
+positively lethal. Here we have six ordinary, strong, healthy boys
+struck down at one fell swoop as if there were a pestilence raging.
+Why----"
+
+"One moment," said the headmaster. "Come in."
+
+A small figure appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Please, sir," said the figure in the strained voice of one speaking a
+"piece" which he has committed to memory. "Mr. Seymour says please
+would you mind letting the doctor come to his house at once because
+Linton is ill."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the doctor. "What's the matter with him?"
+
+"Please, sir, I believe it's buckwheat cakes."
+
+"What! And here's another of them!"
+
+A second small figure had appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Sir, please, sir," said the newcomer, "Mr. Bradfield says may the
+doctor----"
+
+"And what boy is it _this_ time?"
+
+"Please, sir, it's Brown. He went to Ring's Stores----"
+
+The headmaster rose.
+
+"Perhaps you had better go at once, Oakes," he said. "This is becoming
+serious. That place is a positive menace to the community. I shall put
+it out of bounds tomorrow morning."
+
+And when Dunstable and Linton, pale but cheerful, made their way--slowly,
+as befitted convalescents--to Cook's two days afterwards, they had to sit
+on the counter. All the other seats were occupied.
+
+
+
+
+THE GUARDIAN
+
+
+In his Sunday suit (with ten shillings in specie in the right-hand
+trouser pocket) and a brand-new bowler hat, the youngest of the
+Shearnes, Thomas Beauchamp Algernon, was being launched by the
+combined strength of the family on his public-school career. It was a
+solemn moment. The landscape was dotted with relatives--here a small
+sister, awed by the occasion into refraining from insult; there an
+aunt, vaguely admonitory. "Well, Tom," said Mr. Shearne, "you'll soon
+be off now. You're sure to like Eckleton. Remember to cultivate your
+bowling. Everyone can bat nowadays. And play forward, not outside. The
+outsides get most of the fun, certainly, but then if you're a forward,
+you've got eight chances of getting into a team."
+
+"All right, father."
+
+"Oh, and work hard." This by way of an afterthought.
+
+"All right, father."
+
+"And, Tom," said Mrs. Shearne, "you are sure to be comfortable at
+school, because I asked Mrs. Davy to write to her sister, Mrs.
+Spencer, who has a son at Eckleton, and tell her to tell him to look
+after you when you get there. He is in Mr. Dencroft's house, which is
+next door to Mr. Blackburn's, so you will be quite close to one
+another. Mind you write directly you get there."
+
+"All right, mother."
+
+"And look here, Tom." His eldest brother stepped to the front and
+spoke earnestly. "Look here, don't you forget what I've been telling
+you?"
+
+"All right."
+
+"You'll be right enough if you don't go sticking on side. Don't forget
+that, however much of a blood you may have been at that rotten little
+private school of yours, you're not one at Eckleton."
+
+"All right."
+
+"You look clean, which is the great thing. There's nothing much wrong
+with you except cheek. You've got enough of that to float a ship. Keep
+it under."
+
+"All right. Keep your hair on."
+
+"There you go," said the expert, with gloomy triumph. "If you say that
+sort of thing at Eckleton, you'll get jolly well sat on, by Jove!"
+
+"Bai Jove, old chap!" murmured the younger brother, "we're devils in
+the Forty-twoth!"
+
+The other, whose chief sorrow in life was that he could not get the
+smaller members of the family to look with proper awe on the fact that
+he had just passed into Sandhurst, gazed wistfully at the speaker,
+but, realising that there was a locked door between them, tried no
+active measures.
+
+"Well, anyhow," he said, "you'll soon get it knocked out of you,
+that's one comfort. Look here, if you do get scrapping with anybody,
+don't forget all I've taught you. And I should go on boxing there if I
+were you, so as to go down to Aldershot some day. You ought to make a
+fairly decent featherweight if you practise."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Let's know when Eckleton's playing Haileybury, and I'll come and look
+you up. I want to see that match."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, Tom."
+
+"Good-bye, Tom, dear."
+
+Chorus of aunts and other supers: "Goodbye, Tom."
+
+Tom (comprehensively): "G'bye."
+
+The train left the station.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kennedy, the head of Dencroft's, said that when he wanted his study
+turned into a beastly furnace, he would take care to let Spencer know.
+He pointed out that just because it was his habit to warm the study
+during the winter months, there was no reason why Spencer should light
+the gas-stove on an afternoon in the summer term when the thermometer
+was in the eighties. Spencer thought he might want some muffins cooked
+for tea, did he? Kennedy earnestly advised Spencer to give up
+thinking, as Nature had not equipped him for the strain. Thinking
+necessitated mental effort, and Spencer, in Kennedy's opinion, had no
+mind, but rubbed along on a cheap substitute of mud and putty.
+
+More chatty remarks were exchanged, and then Spencer tore himself away
+from the pleasant interview, and went downstairs to the junior study,
+where he remarked to his friend Phipps that Life was getting a bit
+thick.
+
+"What's up now?" inquired Phipps.
+
+"Everything. We've just had a week of term, and I've been in extra
+once already for doing practically nothing, and I've got a hundred
+lines, and Kennedy's been slanging me for lighting the stove. How was
+I to know he didn't want it lit? Wish I was fagging for somebody
+else."
+
+"All the while you're jawing," said Phipps, "there's a letter for you
+on the mantelpiece, staring at you?"
+
+"So there is. Hullo!"
+
+"What's up? Hullo! is that a postal order? How much for?"
+
+"Five bob. I say, who's Shearne?"
+
+"New kid in Blackburn's. Why?"
+
+"Great Scott! I remember now. They told me to look after him. I
+haven't seen him yet. And listen to this: 'Mrs. Shearne has sent me
+the enclosed to give to you. Her son writes to say that he is very
+happy and getting on very well, so she is sure you must have been
+looking after him.' Why, I don't know the kid by sight. I clean forgot
+all about him."
+
+"Well, you'd better go and see him now, just to say you've done it."
+
+Spencer perpended.
+
+"Beastly nuisance having a new kid hanging on to you. He's probably a
+frightful rotter."
+
+"Well, anyway, you ought to," said Phipps, who possessed the
+_scenario_ of a conscience.
+
+"I can't."
+
+"All right, don't, then. But you ought to send back that postal
+order."
+
+"Look here, Phipps," said Spencer plaintively, "you needn't be an
+idiot, you know."
+
+And the trivial matter of Thomas B. A. Shearne was shelved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomas, as he had stated in his letter to his mother, was exceedingly
+happy at Eckleton, and getting on very nicely indeed. It is true that
+there had been one or two small unpleasantnesses at first, but those
+were over now, and he had settled down completely. The little troubles
+alluded to above had begun on his second day at Blackburn's. Thomas,
+as the reader may have gathered from his glimpse of him at the station,
+was not a diffident youth. He was quite prepared for anything Fate
+might have up its sleeve for him, and he entered the junior day-room at
+Blackburn's ready for emergencies. On the first day nothing happened.
+One or two people asked him his name, but none inquired what his father
+was--a question which, he had understood from books of school life, was
+invariably put to the new boy. He was thus prevented from replying
+"coolly, with his eyes fixed on his questioner's": "A gentleman. What's
+yours?" and this, of course, had been a disappointment. But he reconciled
+himself to it, and on the whole enjoyed his first day at Eckleton.
+
+On the second there occurred an Episode.
+
+Thomas had inherited from his mother a pleasant, rather meek cast of
+countenance. He had pink cheeks and golden hair--almost indecently
+golden in one who was not a choirboy.
+
+Now, if you are going to look like a Ministering Child or a Little
+Willie, the Sunbeam of the Home, when you go to a public school,
+you must take the consequences. As Thomas sat by the window of the
+junior day-room reading a magazine, and deeply interested in it,
+there fell upon his face such a rapt, angelic expression that the
+sight of it, silhouetted against the window, roused Master P. Burge,
+his fellow-Blackburnite, as it had been a trumpet-blast. To seize a
+Bradley Arnold's Latin Prose Exercises and hurl it across the room
+was with Master Burge the work of a moment. It struck Thomas on the
+ear. He jumped, and turned some shades pinker. Then he put down his
+magazine, picked up the Bradley Arnold, and sat on it. After which he
+resumed his magazine.
+
+The acute interest of the junior day-room, always fond of a break in
+the monotony of things, induced Burge to go further into the matter.
+
+"You with the face!" said Burge rudely.
+
+Thomas looked up.
+
+"What the dickens are you going with my book? Pass it back!"
+
+"Oh, is this yours?" said Thomas. "Here you are."
+
+He walked towards him, carrying the book. At two yards range he fired
+it in. It hit Burge with some force in the waistcoat, and there was a
+pause while he collected his wind.
+
+Then the thing may be said to have begun.
+
+Yes, said Burge, interrogated on the point five minutes later, he
+_had_ had enough.
+
+"Good," said Thomas pleasantly. "Want a handkerchief?"
+
+That evening he wrote to his mother and, thanking her for kind
+inquiries, stated that he was not being bullied. He added, also in
+answer to inquiries, that he had not been tossed in a blanket, and
+that--so far--no Hulking Senior (with scowl) had let him down from the
+dormitory window after midnight by a sheet, in order that he might
+procure gin from the local public-house. As far as he could gather,
+the seniors were mostly teetotallers. Yes, he had seen Spencer several
+times. He did not add that he had seen him from a distance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I'm so glad I asked Mrs. Davy to get her nephew to look after Tom,"
+said Mrs. Shearne, concluding the reading of the epistle at breakfast.
+"It makes such a difference to a new boy having somebody to protect
+him at first."
+
+"Only drawback is," said his eldest brother gloomily--"won't get cheek
+knocked out of him. Tom's kid wh'ought get'sheadsmacked reg'ly. Be no
+holding him."
+
+And he helped himself to marmalade, of which delicacy his mouth was
+full, with a sort of magnificent despondency.
+
+By the end of the first fortnight of his school career, Thomas
+Beauchamp Algernon had overcome all the little ruggednesses which
+relieve the path of the new boy from monotony. He had been taken in by
+a primaeval "sell" which the junior day-room invariably sprang on the
+new-comer. But as he had sat on the head of the engineer of the same
+for the space of ten minutes, despite the latter's complaints of pain
+and forecasts of what he would do when he got up, the laugh had not
+been completely against him. He had received the honourable
+distinction of extra lesson for ragging in French. He had been
+"touched up" by the prefect of his dormitory for creating a
+disturbance in the small hours. In fact, he had gone through all the
+usual preliminaries, and become a full-blown Eckletonian.
+
+His letters home were so cheerful at this point that a second postal
+order relieved the dwindling fortune of Spencer. And it was this,
+coupled with the remonstrances of Phipps, that induced the Dencroftian
+to break through his icy reserve.
+
+"Look here, Spencer," said Phipps, his conscience thoroughly stirred
+by this second windfall, "it's all rot. You must either send back that
+postal order, or go and see the chap. Besides, he's quite a decent
+kid. We're in the same game at cricket. He's rather a good bowler. I'm
+getting to know him quite well. I've got a jolly sight more right to
+those postal orders than you have."
+
+"But he's an awful ass to look at," pleaded Spencer.
+
+"What's wrong with him? Doesn't look nearly such a goat as you," said
+Phipps, with the refreshing directness of youth.
+
+"He's got yellow hair," argued Spencer.
+
+"Why shouldn't he have?"
+
+"He looks like a sort of young Sunday-school kid."
+
+"Well, he jolly well isn't, then, because I happen to know that he's
+had scraps with some of the fellows in his house, and simply mopped
+them."
+
+"Well, all right, then," said Spencer reluctantly.
+
+The historic meeting took place outside the school shop at the quarter
+to eleven interval next morning. Thomas was leaning against the wall,
+eating a bun. Spencer approached him with half a jam sandwich in his
+hand. There was an awkward pause.
+
+"Hullo!" said Spencer at last.
+
+"Hullo!" said Thomas.
+
+Spencer finished his sandwich and brushed the crumbs off his trousers.
+Thomas continued operations on the bun with the concentrated
+expression of a lunching python.
+
+"I believe your people know my people," said Spencer.
+
+"We have some awfully swell friends," said Thomas. Spencer chewed this
+thoughtfully awhile.
+
+"Beastly cheek," he said at last.
+
+"Sorry," said Thomas, not looking it.
+
+Spencer produced a bag of gelatines.
+
+"Have one?" he asked.
+
+"What's wrong with 'em?"
+
+"All right, don't."
+
+He selected a gelatine and consumed it.
+
+"Ever had your head smacked?" he inquired courteously.
+
+A slightly strained look came into Thomas's blue eyes.
+
+"Not often," he replied politely. "Why?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Spencer. "I was only wondering."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"Look here," said Spencer, "my mater told me to look after you."
+
+"Well, you can look after me now if you want to, because I'm going."
+
+And Thomas dissolved the meeting by walking off in the direction of
+the junior block.
+
+"That kid," said Spencer to his immortal soul, "wants his head
+smacked, badly."
+
+At lunch Phipps had questions to ask.
+
+"Saw you talking to Shearne in the interval," he said. "What were you
+talking about?"
+
+"Oh, nothing in particular."
+
+"What did you think of him?"
+
+"Little idiot."
+
+"Ask him to tea this afternoon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You must. Dash it all, you must do something for him. You've had ten
+bob out of his people."
+
+Spencer made no reply.
+
+Going to the school shop that afternoon, he found Thomas seated there
+with Phipps, behind a pot of tea. As a rule, he and Phipps tea'd
+together, and he resented this desertion.
+
+"Come on," said Phipps. "We were waiting for you."
+
+"Pining away," added Thomas unnecessarily.
+
+Spencer frowned austerely.
+
+"Come and look after me," urged Thomas.
+
+Spencer sat down in silence. For a minute no sound could be heard but
+the champing of Thomas's jaws as he dealt with a slab of gingerbread.
+
+"Buck up," said Phipps uneasily.
+
+"Give me," said Thomas, "just one loving look."
+
+Spencer ignored the request. The silence became tense once more.
+
+"Coming to the house net, Phipps?" asked Spencer.
+
+"We were going to the baths. Why don't you come?"
+
+"All right," said Spencer.
+
+Doctors tell us that we should allow one hour to elapse between taking
+food and bathing, but the rule was not rigidly adhered to at Eckleton.
+The three proceeded straight from the tea-table to the baths.
+
+The place was rather empty when they arrived. It was a little earlier
+than the majority of Eckletonians bathed. The bath filled up as lock-up
+drew near. With the exception of a couple of infants splashing about in
+the shallow end, and a stout youth who dived in from the spring-board,
+scrambled out, and dived in again, each time flatter than the last, they
+had the place to themselves.
+
+"What's it like, Gorrick," inquired Phipps of the stout youth, who had
+just appeared above the surface again, blowing like a whale. The
+question was rendered necessary by the fact that many years before the
+boiler at the Eckleton baths had burst, and had never been repaired,
+with the consequence that the temperature of the water was apt to
+vary. That is to say, most days it was colder than others.
+
+"Simply boiling," said the man of weight, climbing out. "I say, did I
+go in all right then?"
+
+"Not bad," said Phipps.
+
+"Bit flat," added Thomas critically.
+
+Gorrick blinked severely at the speaker. A head-waiter at a
+fashionable restaurant is cordial in his manner compared with a boy
+who has been at a public school a year, when addressed familiarly by a
+new boy. After reflecting on the outrage for a moment, he dived in
+again.
+
+"Worse than ever," said Truthful Thomas.
+
+"Look here!" said Gorrick.
+
+"Oh, come _on_!" exclaimed Phipps, and led Thomas away.
+
+"That kid," said Gorrick to Spencer, "wants his head smacked, badly."
+
+"That's just what I say," agreed Spencer, with the eagerness of a
+great mind which has found another that thinks alike with itself.
+
+Spencer was the first of the trio ready to enter the water. His
+movements were wary and deliberate. There was nothing of the
+professional diver about Spencer. First he stood on the edge and
+rubbed his arms, regarding the green water beneath with suspicion and
+dislike. Then, crouching down, he inserted three toes of his left
+foot, drew them back sharply, and said "Oo!" Then he stood up again.
+His next move was to slap his chest and dance a few steps, after which
+he put his right foot into the water, again remarked "Oo!" and resumed
+Position I.
+
+"Thought you said it was warm," he shouted to Gorrick.
+
+"So it is; hot as anything. Come on in."
+
+And Spencer came on in. Not because he wanted to--for, by rights,
+there were some twelve more movements to be gone through before he
+should finally creep in at the shallow end--but because a cold hand,
+placed suddenly on the small of his back, urged him forward. Down he
+went, with the water fizzing and bubbling all over and all round him.
+He swallowed a good deal of it, but there was still plenty left; and
+what there was was colder than one would have believed possible.
+
+He came to the surface after what seemed to him a quarter of an hour,
+and struck out for the side. When he got out, Phipps and Thomas had
+just got in. Gorrick was standing at the end of the cocoanut matting
+which formed a pathway to the spring-board. Gorrick was blue, but
+determined.
+
+"I say! Did I go in all right then?" inquired Gorrick.
+
+"How the dickens do I know?" said Spencer, stung to fresh wrath by the
+inanity of the question.
+
+"Spencer did," said Thomas, appearing in the water below them and
+holding on to the rail.
+
+"Look here!" cried Spencer; "did you shove me in then?"
+
+"Me! Shove!" Thomas's voice expressed horror and pain. "Why, you dived
+in. Jolly good one, too. Reminded me of the diving elephants at the
+Hippodrome."
+
+And he swam off.
+
+"That kid," said Gorrick, gazing after him, "wants his head smacked."
+
+"Badly," agreed Spencer. "Look here! did he shove me in? Did you see
+him?"
+
+"I was doing my dive. But it must have been him. Phipps never rags in
+the bath."
+
+Spencer grunted--an expressive grunt--and, creeping down the steps,
+entered the water again.
+
+It was Spencer's ambition to swim ten lengths of the bath. He was not
+a young Channel swimmer, and ten lengths represented a very respectable
+distance to him. He proceeded now to attempt to lower his record. It
+was not often that he got the bath so much to himself. Usually, there
+was barely standing-room in the water, and long-distance swimming was
+impossible. But now, with a clear field, he should, he thought, be able
+to complete the desired distance.
+
+He was beginning the fifth length before interruption came. Just as he
+reached halfway, a reproachful voice at his side said: "Oh, Percy,
+you'll tire yourself!" and a hand on the top of his head propelled him
+firmly towards the bottom.
+
+Every schoolboy, as Honble. Macaulay would have put it, knows the
+sensation of being ducked. It is always unpleasant--sometimes more,
+sometimes less. The present case belonged to the former class. There
+was just room inside Spencer for another half-pint of water. He
+swallowed it. When he came to the surface, he swam to the side without
+a word and climbed out. It was the last straw. Honour could now be
+satisfied only with gore.
+
+He hung about outside the baths till Phipps and Thomas appeared, then,
+with a steadfast expression on his face, he walked up to the latter
+and kicked him.
+
+Thomas seemed surprised, but not alarmed. His eyes grew a little
+rounder, and the pink on his cheeks deepened. He looked like a
+choir-boy in a bad temper.
+
+"Hullo! What's up, you ass, Spencer?" inquired Phipps.
+
+Spencer said nothing.
+
+"Where shall we go?" asked Thomas.
+
+"Oh, chuck it!" said Phipps the peacemaker.
+
+Spencer and Thomas were eyeing each other warily.
+
+"You chaps aren't going to fight?" said Phipps.
+
+The notion seemed to distress him.
+
+"Unless he cares to take a kicking," said Spencer suavely.
+
+"Not to-day, I think, thanks," replied Thomas without heat.
+
+"Then, look here!" said Phipps briskly, "I know a ripping little place
+just off the Lelby Road. It isn't five minutes' walk, and there's no
+chance of being booked there. Rot if someone was to come and stop it
+half-way through. It's in a field; thick hedges. No one can see. And I
+tell you what--I'll keep time. I've got a watch. Two minute rounds,
+and half-a-minute in between, and I'm the referee; so, if anybody
+fouls the other chap, I'll stop the fight. See? Come on!"
+
+Of the details of that conflict we have no very clear record. Phipps
+is enthusiastic, but vague. He speaks in eulogistic terms of a
+"corker" which Spencer brought off in the second round, and, again, of
+a "tremendous biff" which Thomas appears to have consummated in the
+fourth. But of the more subtle points of the fighting he is content
+merely to state comprehensively that they were "top-hole." As to the
+result, it would seem that, in the capacity of referee, he declared
+the affair a draw at the end of the seventh round; and, later, in his
+capacity of second to both parties, helped his principals home by back
+and secret ways, one on each arm.
+
+The next items to which the chronicler would call the attention of the
+reader are two letters.
+
+The first was from Mrs. Shearne to Spencer, and ran as follows--
+
+    My Dear Spencer,--I am writing to you direct, instead of through
+    your aunt, because I want to thank you so much for looking after
+    my boy so well. I know what a hard time a new boy has at a public
+    school if he has got nobody to take care of him at first. I heard
+    from Tom this morning. He seems so happy, and so fond of you. He
+    says you are "an awfully decent chap" and "the only chap who has
+    stood up to him at all." I suppose he means "for him." I hope you
+    will come and spend part of your holidays with us. ("Catch _me!_"
+    said Spencer.)
+
+                            _Yours sincerely,_
+                                      _Isabel Shearne_
+
+    P.S.--I hope you will manage to buy something nice with
+    the enclosed.
+
+The enclosed was yet another postal order for five shillings. As
+somebody wisely observed, a woman's P.S. is always the most important
+part of her letter.
+
+"That kid," murmured Spencer between swollen lips, "has got cheek
+enough for eighteen! 'Awfully decent chap!'"
+
+He proceeded to compose a letter in reply, and for dignity combined
+with lucidity it may stand as a model to young writers.
+
+                                 _5 College Grounds,_
+                                          _Eckleton._
+
+    Mr. C. F. Spencer begs to present his compliments to Mrs. Shearne,
+    and returns the postal order, because he doesn't see why he should
+    have it. He notes your remarks _re_ my being a decent chap in
+    your favour of the 13th _prox_., but cannot see where it quite
+    comes in, as the only thing I've done to Mrs. Shearne's son is to
+    fight seven rounds with him in a field, W. G. Phipps refereeing. It
+    was a draw. I got a black eye and rather a whack in the mouth, but
+    gave him beans also, particularly in the wind, which I learned to do
+    from reading "Rodney Stone"--the bit where Bob Whittaker beats the
+    Eyetalian Gondoleery Cove. Hoping that this will be taken in the
+    spirit which is meant,
+
+                           _I remain_
+                                   _Yours sincerely,_
+                                               _C. F. Spencer_
+    _One enclosure._
+
+He sent this off after prep., and retired to bed full of spiritual
+pride.
+
+On the following morning, going to the shop during the interval, he
+came upon Thomas negotiating a hot bun.
+
+"Hullo!" said Thomas.
+
+As was generally the case after he had had a fair and spirited turn-out
+with a fellow human being, Thomas had begun to feel that he loved his
+late adversary as a brother. A wholesome respect, which had hitherto
+been wanting, formed part of his opinion of him.
+
+"Hullo!" said Spencer, pausing.
+
+"I say," said Thomas.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+"I say, I don't believe we shook hands, did we?"
+
+"I don't remember doing it."
+
+They shook hands. Spencer began to feel that there were points about
+Thomas, after all.
+
+"I say," said Thomas.
+
+"Hullo?"
+
+"I'm sorry about in the bath, you know. I didn't know you minded being
+ducked."
+
+"Oh, all right!" said Spencer awkwardly.
+
+Eight bars rest.
+
+"I say," said Thomas.
+
+"Hullo!"
+
+"Doing anything this afternoon?"
+
+"Nothing special, Why?"
+
+"Come and have tea?"
+
+"All right. Thanks."
+
+"I'll wait for you outside the house."
+
+"All right."
+
+It was just here that Spencer regretted that he had sent back that
+five-shilling postal order. Five good shillings.
+
+Simply chucked away.
+
+Oh, Life, Life!
+
+But they were not, after all. On his plate at breakfast next day Spencer
+found a letter. This was the letter--
+
+    Messrs. J. K. Shearne (father of T. B. A. Shearne) and P. W. Shearne
+    (brother of same) beg to acknowledge receipt of Mr. C. F. Spencer's
+    esteemed communication of yesterday's date, and in reply desire to
+    inform Mr. Spencer of their hearty approval of his attentions to
+    Mr. T. B. A. Shearne's wind. It is their opinion that the above,
+    a nice boy but inclined to cheek, badly needs treatment on these
+    lines occasionally. They therefore beg to return the postal order,
+    together with another for a like sum, and trust that this will meet
+    with Mr. Spencer's approval.
+
+                               (Signed) _J. K. Shearne,_
+                                        _P. W. Shearne._
+     Two enclosures.
+
+"Of course, what's up really," said Spencer to himself, after reading
+this, "is that the whole family's jolly well cracked."
+
+His eye fell on the postal orders.
+
+"Still----!" he said.
+
+That evening he entertained Phipps and Thomas B. A. Shearne lavishly
+at tea.
+
+
+
+
+A CORNER IN LINES
+
+
+Of all the useless and irritating things in this world, lines are
+probably the most useless and the most irritating. In fact, I only
+know of two people who ever got any good out of them. Dunstable, of
+Day's, was one, Linton, of Seymour's, the other. For a portion of one
+winter term they flourished on lines. The more there were set, the
+better they liked it. They would have been disappointed if masters had
+given up the habit of doling them out.
+
+Dunstable was a youth of ideas. He saw far more possibilities in the
+routine of life at Locksley than did the majority of his
+contemporaries, and every now and then he made use of these
+possibilities in a way that caused a considerable sensation in the
+school.
+
+In the ordinary way of school work, however, he was not particularly
+brilliant, and suffered in consequence. His chief foe was his
+form-master, Mr. Langridge. The feud between them had begun on
+Dunstable's arrival in the form two terms before, and had continued
+ever since. The balance of points lay with the master. The staff has
+ways of scoring which the school has not. This story really begins
+with the last day but one of the summer term. It happened that
+Dunstable's people were going to make their annual migration to
+Scotland on that day, and the Headmaster, approached on the subject
+both by letter and in person, saw no reason why--the examinations
+being over--Dunstable should not leave Locksley a day before the
+end of term.
+
+He called Dunstable to his study one night after preparation.
+
+"Your father has written to me, Dunstable," he said, "to ask that you
+may be allowed to go home on Wednesday instead of Thursday. I think
+that, under the special circumstances, there will be no objection to
+this. You had better see that the matron packs your boxes."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Dunstable. "Good business," he added to himself, as
+he left the room.
+
+When he got back to his own den, he began to ponder over the matter,
+to see if something could not be made out of it. That was Dunstable's
+way. He never let anything drop until he had made certain that he had
+exhausted all its possibilities.
+
+Just before he went to bed he had evolved a neat little scheme for
+scoring off Mr. Langridge. The knowledge of his plans was confined to
+himself and the Headmaster. His dorm-master would imagine that he was
+going to stay on till the last day of term. Therefore, if he
+misbehaved himself in form, Mr. Langridge would set him lines in
+blissful ignorance of the fact that he would not be there next day to
+show them up. At the beginning of the following term, moreover, he
+would not be in Mr. Langridge's form, for he was certain of his move
+up.
+
+He acted accordingly.
+
+He spent the earlier part of Wednesday morning in breaches of the
+peace. Mr. Langridge, instead of pulling him up, put him on to
+translate; Dunstable went on to translate. As he had not prepared the
+lesson and was not an adept at construing unseen, his performance was
+poor.
+
+After a minute and a half, the form-master wearied.
+
+"Have you looked at this, Dunstable?" he asked.
+
+There was a time-honoured answer to this question.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said.
+
+Public-school ethics do not demand that you should reply truthfully to
+the spirit of a question. The letter of it is all that requires
+attention. Dunstable had _looked_ at the lesson. He was looking
+at it then. Masters should practise exactness of speech. A certain
+form at Harrow were in the habit of walking across a copy of a Latin
+author before morning-school. They could then say with truth that they
+"had been over it." This is not an isolated case.
+
+"Go on," said Mr. Langridge.
+
+Dunstable smiled as he did so.
+
+Mr. Langridge was annoyed.
+
+"What are you laughing at? What do you mean by it? Stand up. You will
+write out the lesson in Latin and English, and show it up to me by
+four this afternoon. I know what you are thinking. You imagine that
+because this is the end of the term you can do as you please, but you
+will find yourself mistaken. Mind--by four o'clock."
+
+At four o'clock Dunstable was enjoying an excellent tea in Green
+Street, Park Lane, and telling his mother that he had had a most
+enjoyable term, marred by no unpleasantness whatever. His holidays
+were sweetened by the thought of Mr. Langridge's baffled wrath on
+discovering the true inwardness of the recent episode.
+
+        *       *         *        *       *
+
+When he returned to Locksley at the beginning of the winter term, he
+was at once made aware that that episode was not to be considered
+closed. On the first evening, Mr. Day, his housemaster, sent for him.
+
+"Well, Dunstable," he said, "where is that imposition?"
+
+Dunstable affected ignorance.
+
+"Please, sir, you set me no imposition."
+
+"No, Dunstable, no." Mr. Day peered at him gravely through his
+spectacles. "_I_ set you no imposition; but Mr. Langridge did."
+
+Dunstable imitated that eminent tactician, Br'er Rabbit. He "lay low
+and said nuffin."
+
+"Surely," continued Mr. Day, in tones of mild reproach, "you did not
+think that you could take Mr. Langridge in?"
+
+Dunstable rather thought he _had_ taken Mr. Langridge in; but he
+made no reply.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Day. "I must set you some punishment. I shall give
+the butler instructions to hand you a note from me at three o'clock
+to-morrow." (The next day was a half-holiday.) "In that note you will
+find indicated what I wish you to write out."
+
+Why this comic-opera secret-society business, Dunstable wondered. Then
+it dawned upon him. Mr. Day wished to break up his half-holiday
+thoroughly.
+
+That afternoon Dunstable retired in disgust to his study to brood over
+his wrongs; to him entered Charles, his friend, one C. J. Linton, to
+wit, of Seymour's, a very hearty sportsman.
+
+"Good," said Linton. "Didn't think I should find you in. Thought you
+might have gone off somewhere as it's such a ripping day. Tell you
+what we'll do. Scull a mile or two up the river and have tea
+somewhere."
+
+"I should like to awfully," said Dunstable, "but I'm afraid I can't."
+
+And he explained Mr. Day's ingenious scheme for preventing him from
+straying that afternoon.
+
+"Rot, isn't it," he said.
+
+"Beastly. Wouldn't have thought old Day had it in him. But I'll tell
+you what," he said. "Do the impot now, and then you'll be able to
+start at three sharp, and we shall get in a good time on the river.
+Day always sets the same thing. I've known scores of chaps get impots
+from him, and they all had to do the Greek numerals. He's mad on the
+Greek numerals. Never does anything else. You'll be as safe as
+anything if you do them. Buck up, I'll help."
+
+They accordingly sat down there and then. By three o'clock an imposing
+array of sheets of foolscap covered with badly-written Greek lay on
+the study table.
+
+"That ought to be enough," said Linton, laying down his pen. "He can't
+set you more than we've done, I should think."
+
+"Rummy how alike our writing looks," said Dunstable, collecting the
+sheets and examining them. "You can hardly tell which is which even
+when you know. Well, there goes three. My watch is slow, as it always
+is. I'll go and get that note."
+
+Two minutes later he returned, full of abusive references to Mr. Day.
+The crafty pedagogue appeared to have foreseen Dunstable's attempt to
+circumvent him by doing the Greek numerals on the chance of his
+setting them. The imposition he had set in his note was ten pages of
+irregular verbs, and they were to be shown up in his study before five
+o'clock. Linton's programme for the afternoon was out of the question
+now. But he loyally gave up any other plans which he might have formed
+in order to help Dunstable with his irregular verbs. Dunstable was too
+disgusted with fate to be properly grateful.
+
+"And the worst of it is," he said, as they adjourned for tea at
+half-past four, having deposited the verbs on Mr. Day's table, "that
+all those numerals will be wasted now."
+
+"I should keep them, though," said Linton. "They may come in useful.
+You never know."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Towards the end of the second week of term Fate, by way of
+compensation, allowed Dunstable a distinct stroke of luck. Mr. Forman,
+the master of his new form, set him a hundred lines of Virgil, and
+told him to show them up next day. To Dunstable's delight, the next
+day passed without mention of them; and when the day after that went
+by, and still nothing was said, he came to the conclusion that Mr.
+Forman had forgotten all about them.
+
+Which was indeed the case. Mr. Forman was engaged in editing a new
+edition of the "Bacchae," and was apt to be absent-minded in
+consequence. So Dunstable, with a glad smile, hove the lines into a
+cupboard in his study to keep company with the Greek numerals which he
+had done for Mr. Day, and went out to play fives with Linton.
+
+Linton, curiously enough, had also had a stroke of luck in a rather
+similar way. He told Dunstable about it as they strolled back to the
+houses after their game.
+
+"Bit of luck this afternoon," he said. "You remember Appleby setting
+me a hundred-and-fifty the day before yesterday? Well, I showed
+them up to-day, and he looked through them and chucked them into the
+waste-paper basket under his desk. I thought at the time I hadn't seen
+him muck them up at all with his pencil, which is his usual game, so
+after he had gone at the end of school I nipped to the basket and
+fished them out. They were as good as new, so I saved them up in case
+I get any more."
+
+Dunstable hastened to tell of his own good fortune. Linton was
+impressed by the coincidence.
+
+"I tell you what," he said, "we score either way. Because if we never
+get any more lines----"
+
+Dunstable laughed.
+
+"Yes, I know," Linton went on, "we're bound to. But even supposing we
+don't, what we've got in stock needn't be wasted."
+
+"I don't see that," said Dunstable. "Going to have 'em bound in cloth
+and published? Or were you thinking of framing them?"
+
+"Why, don't you see? Sell them, of course. There are dozens of chaps
+in the school who would be glad of a few hundred lines cheap."
+
+"It wouldn't work. They'd be spotted."
+
+"Rot. It's been done before, and nobody said anything. A chap in
+Seymour's who left last Easter sold all his stock lines by auction on
+the last day of term. They were Virgil mostly and Greek numerals. They
+sold like hot cakes. There were about five hundred of them altogether.
+And I happen to know that every word of them has been given up and
+passed all right."
+
+"Well, I shall keep mine," said Dunstable. "I am sure to want all the
+lines in stock that I can get. I used to think Langridge was fairly
+bad in the way of impots, but Forman takes the biscuit easily. It
+seems to be a sort of hobby of his. You can't stop him."
+
+But it was not until the middle of preparation that the great idea
+flashed upon Dunstable's mind.
+
+It was the simplicity of the thing that took his breath away. That and
+its possibilities. This was the idea. Why not start a Lines Trust in
+the school? An agency for supplying lines at moderate rates to all who
+desired them? There did not seem to be a single flaw in the scheme. He
+and Linton between them could turn out enough material in a week to
+give the Trust a good working capital. And as for the risk of
+detection when customers came to show up the goods supplied to them,
+that was very slight. As has been pointed out before, there was
+practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to
+writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen
+into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk exercise on a
+sheet of foolscap by way of restoring the circulation. Then, again,
+the attitude of the master to whom the lines were shown was not likely
+to be critical. So that everything seemed in favour of Dunstable's
+scheme.
+
+Linton, to whom he confided it, was inclined to scoff at first, but
+when he had had the beauties of the idea explained to him at length,
+became an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme.
+
+"But," he objected, "it'll take up all our time. Is it worth it? We
+can't spend every afternoon sweating away at impots for other people."
+
+"It's all right," said Dunstable, "I've thought of that. We shall need
+to pitch in pretty hard for about a week or ten days. That will give
+us a good big stock, and after that if we turn out a hundred each
+every day it will be all right. A hundred's not much fag if you spread
+them over a day."
+
+Linton admitted that this was sound, and the Locksley Lines Supplying
+Trust, Ltd., set to work in earnest.
+
+It must not be supposed that the Agency left a great deal to chance.
+The writing of lines in advance may seem a very speculative business;
+but both Dunstable and Linton had had a wide experience of Locksley
+masters, and the methods of the same when roused, and they were thus
+enabled to reduce the element of chance to a minimum. They knew, for
+example, that Mr. Day's favourite imposition was the Greek numerals,
+and that in nine cases out of ten that would be what the youth who had
+dealings with him would need to ask for from the Lines Trust. Mr.
+Appleby, on the other hand, invariably set Virgil. The oldest
+inhabitant had never known him to depart from this custom. For the
+French masters extracts from the works of Victor Hugo would probably
+pass muster.
+
+A week from the date of the above conversation, everyone in the
+school, with the exception of the prefects and the sixth form, found
+in his desk on arriving at his form-room a printed slip of paper.
+(Spiking, the stationer in the High Street, had printed it.) It was
+nothing less than the prospectus of the new Trust. It set forth in
+glowing terms the advantages offered by the agency. Dunstable had
+written it--he had a certain amount of skill with his pen--and Linton
+had suggested subtle and captivating additions. The whole presented
+rather a striking appearance.
+
+The document was headed with the name of the Trust in large letters.
+Under this came a number of "scare headlines" such as:
+
+              SEE WHAT YOU SAVE!
+
+                NO MORE WORRY!
+
+             PEACE, PERFECT PEACE!
+
+         WHY DO LINES WHEN WE DO THEM
+                    FOR YOU?
+
+Then came the real prospectus:
+
+    The Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd. has been instituted to
+    meet the growing demand for lines and other impositions. While
+    there are masters at our public schools there will always be lines.
+    At Locksley the crop of masters has always flourished--and still
+    flourishes--very rankly, and the demand for lines has greatly taxed
+    the powers of those to whom has been assigned the task of supplying
+    them.
+
+    It is for the purpose of affording relief to these that the Lines
+    Trust has been formed. It is proposed that all orders for lines
+    shall be supplied out of our vast stock. Our charges are moderate,
+    and vary between threepence and sixpence per hundred lines. The
+    higher charge is made for Greek impositions, which, for obvious
+    reasons, entail a greater degree of labour on our large and
+    efficient staff of writers.
+
+    All orders, which will be promptly executed, should be forwarded to
+    Mr. P. A. Dunstable, 6 College Grounds, Locksley, or to Mr. C. J.
+    Linton, 10 College Grounds, Locksley. _Payment must be inclosed
+    with order, or the latter will not be executed._ Under no
+    conditions will notes of hand or cheques be accepted as legal
+    tender. There is no trust about us except the name.
+
+    Come in your thousands. We have lines for all. If the Trust's
+    stock of lines were to be placed end to end it would reach part
+    of the way to London. "You pay the threepence. We do the rest."
+
+Then a blank space, after which came a few "unsolicited testimonials":
+
+    "Lower Fifth" writes: "I was set two hundred lines of Virgil on
+    Saturday last at one o'clock. Having laid in a supply from your
+    agency I was enabled to show them up at five minutes past one.
+    The master who gave me the commission was unable to restrain his
+    admiration at the rapidity and neatness of my work. You may make
+    what use of this you please."
+
+    "Dexter's House" writes: "Please send me one hundred (100) lines
+    from _Aeneid, Book Two_. Mr. Dexter was so delighted with the last
+    I showed him that he has asked me to do some more."
+
+    "Enthusiast" writes: "Thank you for your Greek numerals. Day took
+    them without blinking. So beautifully were they executed that I can
+    hardly believe even now that I did not write them myself."
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+There could be no doubt about the popularity of the Trust. It caught
+on instantly.
+
+Nothing else was discussed in the form-rooms at the quarter to eleven
+interval, and in the houses after lunch it was the sole topic of
+conversation. Dunstable and Linton were bombarded with questions and
+witticisms of the near personal sort. To the latter they replied with
+directness, to the former evasively.
+
+"What's it all _about?_" someone would ask, fluttering the
+leaflet before Dunstable's unmoved face.
+
+"You should read it carefully," Dunstable would reply. "It's all
+there."
+
+"But what are you playing at?"
+
+"We tried to make it clear to the meanest intelligence. Sorry you
+can't understand it."
+
+While at the same time Linton, in his form-room, would be explaining
+to excited inquirers that he was sorry, but it was impossible to reply
+to their query as to who was running the Trust. He was not at liberty
+to reveal business secrets. Suffice it that there the lines were,
+waiting to be bought, and he was there to sell them. So that if
+anybody cared to lay in a stock, large or small, according to taste,
+would he kindly walk up and deposit the necessary coin?
+
+But here the public showed an unaccountable disinclination to deal. It
+was gratifying to have acquaintances coming up and saying admiringly:
+"You are an ass, you know," as if they were paying the highest of
+compliments--as, indeed, they probably imagined that they were. All
+this was magnificent, but it was not business. Dunstable and Linton
+felt that the whole attitude of the public towards the new enterprise
+was wrong. Locksley seemed to regard the Trust as a huge joke, and its
+prospectus as a literary _jeu d'esprit_.
+
+In fact, it looked very much as if--from a purely commercial point of
+view--the great Lines Supplying Trust was going to be what is known in
+theatrical circles as a frost.
+
+For two whole days the public refused to bite, and Dunstable and
+Linton, turning over the stacks of lines in their studies, thought
+gloomily that this world is no place for original enterprise.
+
+Then things began to move.
+
+It was quite an accident that started them. Jackson, of Dexter's, was
+teaing with Linton, and, as was his habit, was giving him a condensed
+history of his life since he last saw him. In the course of this he
+touched on a small encounter with M. Gaudinois which had occurred that
+afternoon.
+
+"So I got two pages of 'Quatre-Vingt Treize' to write," he concluded,
+"for doing practically nothing."
+
+All Jackson's impositions, according to him, were given him for doing
+practically nothing. Now and then he got them for doing literally
+nothing--when he ought to have been doing form-work.
+
+"Done 'em?" asked Linton.
+
+"Not yet; no," replied Jackson. "More tea, please."
+
+"What you want to do, then," said Linton, "is to apply to the Locksley
+Lines Supplying Trust. That's what you must do."
+
+"You needn't rot a chap on a painful subject," protested Jackson.
+
+"I wasn't rotting," said Linton. "Why don't you apply to the Lines
+Trust?"
+
+"Then do you mean to say that there really is such a thing?" Jackson
+said incredulously. "Why I thought it was all a rag."
+
+"I know you did. It's the rotten sort of thing you would think. Rag,
+by Jove! Look at this. Now do you understand that this is a genuine
+concern?"
+
+He got up and went to the cupboard which filled the space between the
+stove and the bookshelf. From this resting-place he extracted a great
+pile of manuscript and dumped it down on the table with a bang which
+caused a good deal of Jackson's tea to spring from its native cup on
+to its owner's trousers.
+
+"When you've finished," protested Jackson, mopping himself with a
+handkerchief that had seen better days.
+
+"Sorry. But look at these. What did you say your impot was? Oh, I
+remember. Here you are. Two pages of 'Quatre-Vingt Treize.' I don't
+know which two pages, but I suppose any will do."
+
+Jackson was amazed.
+
+"Great Scott! what a wad of stuff! When did you do it all?"
+
+"Oh, at odd times. Dunstable's got just as much over at Day's. So you
+see the Trust is a jolly big show. Here are your two pages. That looks
+just like your scrawl, doesn't it? These would be fourpence in the
+ordinary way, but you can have 'em for nothing this time."
+
+"Oh, I say," said Jackson gratefully, "that's awfully good of you."
+
+After that the Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd. went ahead with
+a rush. The brilliant success which attended its first specimen--M.
+Gaudinois took Jackson's imposition without a murmur--promoted
+confidence in the public, and they rushed to buy. Orders poured in
+from all the houses, and by the middle of the term the organisers of
+the scheme were able to divide a substantial sum.
+
+"How are you getting on round your way?" asked Linton of Dunstable at
+the end of the sixth week of term.
+
+"Ripping. Selling like hot cakes."
+
+"So are mine," said Linton. "I've almost come to the end of my stock.
+I ought to have written some more, but I've been a bit slack lately."
+
+"Yes, buck up. We must keep a lot in hand."
+
+"I say, did you hear that about Merrett in our house?" asked Linton.
+
+"What about him?"
+
+"Why, he tried to start a rival show. Wrote a prospectus and
+everything. But it didn't catch on a bit. The only chap who bought any
+of his lines was young Shoeblossom. He wanted a couple of hundred for
+Appleby. Appleby was on to them like bricks. Spotted Shoeblossom
+hadn't written them, and asked who had. He wouldn't say, so he got
+them doubled. Everyone in the house is jolly sick with Merrett. They
+think he ought to have owned up."
+
+"Did that smash up Merrett's show? Is he going to turn out any more?"
+
+"Rather not. Who'd buy 'em?"
+
+It would have been better for the Lines Supplying Trust if Merrett had
+not received this crushing blow and had been allowed to carry on a
+rival business on legitimate lines. Locksley was conservative in its
+habits, and would probably have continued to support the old firm.
+
+As it was, the baffled Merrett, a youth of vindictive nature, brooded
+over his defeat, and presently hit upon a scheme whereby things might
+be levelled up.
+
+One afternoon, shortly before lock-up, Dunstable was surprised by the
+advent of Linton to his study in a bruised and dishevelled condition.
+One of his expressive eyes was closed and blackened. He also wore what
+is known in ring circles as a thick ear.
+
+"What on earth's up?" inquired Dunstable, amazed at these phenomena.
+"Have you been scrapping?"
+
+"Yes--Merrett--I won. What are you up to--writing lines? You may as
+well save yourself the trouble. They won't be any good." Dunstable
+stared.
+
+"The Trust's bust," said Linton.
+
+He never wasted words in moments of emotion.
+
+"What!"
+
+"'Bust' was what I said. That beast Merrett gave the show away."
+
+"What did he do? Surely he didn't tell a master?"
+
+"Well, he did the next thing to it. He hauled out that prospectus, and
+started reading it in form. I watched him do it. He kept it under the
+desk and made a foul row, laughing over it. Appleby couldn't help
+spotting him. Of course, he told him to bring him what he was reading.
+Up went Merrett with the prospectus."
+
+"Was Appleby sick?"
+
+"I don't believe he was, really. At least, he laughed when he read the
+thing. But he hauled me up after school and gave me a long jaw, and
+made me take all the lines I'd got to his house. He burnt them. I had
+it out with Merrett just now. He swears he didn't mean to get the
+thing spotted, but I knew he did."
+
+"Where did you scrag him!"
+
+"In the dormitory. He chucked it after the third round."
+
+There was a knock at the door.
+
+"Come in," shouted Dunstable.
+
+Buxton appeared, a member of Appleby's house.
+
+"Oh, Dunstable, Appleby wants to see you."
+
+"All right," said Dunstable wearily.
+
+Mr. Appleby was in facetious mood. He chaffed Dunstable genially about
+his prospectus, and admitted that it had amused him. Dunstable smiled
+without enjoyment. It was a good thing, perhaps, that Mr. Appleby saw
+the humorous rather than the lawless side of the Trust; but all the
+quips in the world could not save that institution from ruin.
+
+Presently Mr. Appleby's manner changed. "I am a funny dog, I know," he
+seemed to say; "but duty is duty, and must be done."
+
+"How many lines have you at your house, Dunstable?" he asked.
+
+"About eight hundred, sir."
+
+"Then you had better write me eight hundred lines, and show them up to
+me in this room at--shall we say at ten minutes to five? It is now a
+quarter to, so that you will have plenty of time."
+
+Dunstable went, and returned five minutes later, bearing an armful of
+manuscript.
+
+"I don't think I shall need to count them," said Mr. Appleby. "Kindly
+take them in batches of ten sheets, and tear them in half, Dunstable."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The last sheet fluttered in two sections into the surfeited
+waste-paper basket.
+
+"It's an awful waste, sir," said Dunstable regretfully.
+
+Mr. Appleby beamed.
+
+"We must, however," he said, "always endeavour to look on the bright
+side, Dunstable. The writing of these eight hundred lines will have
+given you a fine grip of the rhythm of Virgil, the splendid prose of
+Victor Hugo, and the unstudied majesty of the Greek Numerals. Good-night,
+Dunstable."
+
+"Good-night, sir," said the President of the Locksley Lines Supplying
+Trust, Ltd.
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTERS
+
+
+Dunstable had his reasons for wishing to obtain Mr. Montagu Watson's
+autograph, but admiration for that gentleman's novels was not one of
+them.
+
+It was nothing to him that critics considered Mr. Watson one of the
+most remarkable figures in English literature since Scott. If you had
+told him of this, he would merely have wondered in his coarse,
+material way how much Mr. Watson gave the critics for saying so. To
+the reviewer of the _Weekly Booklover_ the great man's latest
+effort, "The Soul of Anthony Carrington" (Popgood and Grooly: 6s.)
+seemed "a work that speaks eloquently in every line of a genius that
+time cannot wither nor custom stale." To Dunstable, who got it out of
+the school library, where it had been placed at the request of a
+literary prefect, and read the first eleven pages, it seemed rot, and
+he said as much to the librarian on returning it.
+
+Yet he was very anxious to get the novelist's autograph. The fact was
+that Mr. Day, his house-master, a man whose private life was in other
+ways unstained by vicious habits, collected autographs. Also Mr. Day
+had behaved in a square manner towards Dunstable on several occasions
+in the past, and Dunstable, always ready to punish bad behaviour in a
+master, was equally anxious to reward and foster any good trait which
+he might exhibit.
+
+On the occasion of the announcement that Mr. Watson had taken the big
+white house near Chesterton, a couple of miles from the school, Mr.
+Day had expressed in Dunstable's hearing a wish that he could add that
+celebrity's signature to his collection. Dunstable had instantly
+determined to play the part of a benevolent Providence. He would get
+the autograph and present it to the house-master, as who should say,
+"see what comes of being good." It would be pleasant to observe the
+innocent joy of the recipient, his child-like triumph, and his
+amazement at the donor's ingenuity in securing the treasure. A
+touching scene--well worth the trouble involved in the quest.
+
+And there would be trouble. For Mr. Montagu Watson was notoriously a
+foe to the autograph-hunter. His curt, type-written replies (signed by
+a secretary) had damped the ardour of scores of brave men and--more or
+less--fair women. A genuine Montagu Watson was a prize in the
+autograph market.
+
+Dunstable was a man of action. When Mark, the boot-boy at Day's,
+carried his burden of letters to the post that evening, there nestled
+among them one addressed to M. Watson, Esq., The White House,
+Chesterton. Looking at it casually, few of his friends would have
+recognised Dunstable's handwriting. For it had seemed good to that man
+of guile to adopt for the occasion the role of a backward youth of
+twelve years old. He thought tender years might touch Mr. Watson's
+heart.
+
+This was the letter:
+
+    _Dear Sir_,--I am only a littel boy, but I think your
+    books ripping. I often wonder how you think of it all. Will you
+    please send me your ortograf? I like your books very much. I have
+    named my white rabit Montagu after you. I punched Jones II in
+    the eye to-day becos he didn't like your books. I have spent the
+    only penny I have on the stampe for this letter which I might have
+    spent on tuck. I want to be like Maltby in "The Soul of Anthony
+    Carrington" when I grow up.
+
+                            _Your sincere reader_,
+                             P. A. Dunstable.
+
+It was a little unfortunate, perhaps, that he selected Maltby as his
+ideal character. That gentleman was considered by critics a masterly
+portrait of the cynical _roue_. But it was the only name he
+remembered.
+
+"Hot stuff!" said Dunstable to himself, as he closed the envelope.
+
+"Little beast!" said Mr. Watson to himself as he opened it. It arrived
+by the morning post, and he never felt really himself till after
+breakfast.
+
+"Here, Morrison," he said to his secretary, later in the morning:
+"just answer this, will you? The usual thing--thanks and most deeply
+grateful, y'know."
+
+Next day the following was included in Dunstable's correspondence:
+
+    Mr. Montagu Watson presents his compliments to Mr. P. A. Dunstable,
+    and begs to thank him for all the kind things he says about his
+    work in his letter of the 18th inst., for which he is deeply grateful.
+
+"Foiled!" said Dunstable, and went off to Seymour's to see his friend
+Linton.
+
+"Got any notepaper?" he asked.
+
+"Heaps," said Linton. "Why? Want some?"
+
+"Then get out a piece. I want to dictate a letter."
+
+Linton stared.
+
+"What's up? Hurt your hand?"
+
+Dunstable explained.
+
+"Day collects autographs, you know, and he wants Montagu Watson's
+badly. Pining away, and all that sort of thing. Won't smile until he
+gets it. I had a shot at it yesterday, and got this."
+
+Linton inspected the document.
+
+"So I can't send up another myself, you see."
+
+"Why worry?"
+
+"Oh, I'd like to put Day one up. He's not been bad this term. Come
+on."
+
+"All right. Let her rip."
+
+Dunstable let her rip.
+
+    _Dear Sir_,--I cannot refrain from writing to tell you what
+    an inestimable comfort your novels have been to me during years
+    of sore tribulation and distress----
+
+"Look here," interrupted Linton with decision at this point. "If you
+think I'm going to shove my name at the end of this rot, you're making
+the mistake of a lifetime."
+
+"Of course not. You're a widow who has lost two sons in South Africa.
+We'll think of a good name afterwards. Ready?
+
+    "Ever since my darling Charles Herbert and Percy Lionel were
+    taken from me in that dreadful war, I have turned for consolation
+    to the pages of 'The Soul of Anthony Carrington' and----"
+
+"What, another?" asked Linton.
+
+"There's one called 'Pancakes.'"
+
+"Sure? Sounds rummy."
+
+"That's all right. You have to get a queer title nowadays if you want
+to sell a book."
+
+"Go on, then. Jam it down."
+
+    "--and 'Pancakes.' I hate to bother you, but if you could send me
+    your autograph I should be more grateful than words can say. Yours
+    admiringly."
+
+"What's a good name? How would Dorothy Maynard do?"
+
+"You want something more aristocratic. What price Hilda Foulke-Ponsonby?"
+
+Dunstable made no objection, and Linton signed the letter with a
+flourish.
+
+They installed Mrs. Foulke-Ponsonby at Spiking's in the High Street.
+It was not a very likely address for a lady whose blood was presumably
+of the bluest, but they could think of none except that obliging
+stationer who would take in letters for them.
+
+There was a letter for Mrs. Foulke-Ponsonby next day. Whatever his
+other defects as a correspondent, Mr. Watson was at least prompt with
+his responses.
+
+Mr. Montagu Watson presented his compliments, and was deeply grateful
+for all the kind things Mrs. Foulke-Ponsonby had said about his work
+in her letter of the 19th inst. He was, however, afraid that he
+scarcely deserved them. Her opportunities of deriving consolation from
+"The Soul of Anthony Carrington" had been limited by the fact that
+that book had only been published ten days before: while, as for
+"Pancakes," to which she had referred in such flattering terms, he
+feared that another author must have the credit of any refreshment her
+bereaved spirit might have extracted from that volume, for he had
+written no work of such a name. His own "Pan Wakes" would, he hoped,
+administer an equal quantity of balm.
+
+Mr. Secretary Morrison had slept badly on the night before he wrote
+this letter, and had expended some venom upon its composition.
+
+"Sold again!" said Dunstable.
+
+"You'd better chuck it now. It's no good," said Linton.
+
+"I'll have another shot. Then I'll try and think of something else."
+
+Two days later Mr. Morrison replied to Mr. Edgar Habbesham-Morley, of
+3a, Green Street, Park Lane, to the effect that Mr. Montagu Watson was
+deeply grateful for all the kind things, etc.----
+
+3a, Green Street was Dunstable's home address.
+
+At this juncture the Watson-Dunstable correspondence ceases, and the
+relations become more personal.
+
+On the afternoon of the twenty-third of the month, Mr. Watson, taking
+a meditative stroll through the wood which formed part of his
+property, was infuriated by the sight of a boy.
+
+He was not a man who was fond of boys even in their proper place, and
+the sight of one in the middle of his wood, prancing lightly about
+among the nesting pheasants, stirred his never too placid mind to its
+depths.
+
+He shouted.
+
+The apparition paused.
+
+"Here! Hi! you boy!"
+
+"Sir?" said the stripling, with a winning smile, lifting his cap with
+the air of a D'Orsay.
+
+"What business have you in my wood?"
+
+"Not business," corrected the visitor, "pleasure."
+
+"Come here!" shrilled the novelist.
+
+The stranger receded coyly.
+
+Mr. Watson advanced at the double.
+
+His quarry dodged behind a tree.
+
+For five minutes the great man devoted his powerful mind solely to the
+task of catching his visitor.
+
+The latter, however, proved as elusive as the point of a half-formed
+epigram, and at the end of the five minutes he was no longer within
+sight.
+
+Mr. Watson went off and addressed his keeper in terms which made that
+worthy envious for a week.
+
+"It's eddication," he said subsequently to a friend at the "Cowslip
+Inn." "You and me couldn't talk like that. It wants eddication."
+
+For the next few days the keeper's existence was enlivened by visits
+from what appeared to be a most enthusiastic bird's-nester. By no
+other theory could he account for it. Only a boy with a collection to
+support would run such risks.
+
+To the keeper's mind the human boy up to the age of twenty or so had
+no object in life except to collect eggs. After twenty, of course, he
+took to poaching. This was a boy of about seventeen.
+
+On the fifth day he caught him, and conducted him into the presence of
+Mr. Montagu Watson.
+
+Mr. Watson was brief and to the point. He recognised his visitor as
+the boy for whose benefit he had made himself stiff for two days.
+
+The keeper added further damaging facts.
+
+"Bin here every day, he 'as, sir, for the last week. Well, I says to
+myself, supposition is he'll come once too often. He'll come once too
+often, I says. And then, I says, I'll cotch him. And I cotched him."
+
+The keeper's narrative style had something of the classic simplicity
+of Julius Caesar's.
+
+Mr. Watson bit his pen.
+
+"What you boys come for I can't understand," he said irritably.
+"You're from the school, of course?"
+
+"Yes," said the captive.
+
+"Well, I shall report you to your house-master. What is your name?"
+
+"Dunstable."
+
+"Your house?"
+
+"Day's."
+
+"Very good. That is all."
+
+Dunstable retired.
+
+His next appearance in public life was in Mr. Day's study. Mr. Day had
+sent for him after preparation. He held a letter in his hand, and he
+looked annoyed.
+
+"Come in, Dunstable. I have just received a letter complaining of you.
+It seems that you have been trespassing."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I am surprised, Dunstable, that a sensible boy like you should have
+done such a foolish thing. It seems so objectless. You know how
+greatly the head-master dislikes any sort of friction between the
+school and the neighbours, and yet you deliberately trespass in Mr.
+Watson's wood."
+
+"I'm very sorry, sir."
+
+"I have had a most indignant letter from him--you may see what he
+says. You do not deny it?"
+
+Dunstable ran his eye over the straggling, untidy sentences.
+
+"No, sir. It's quite true."
+
+"In that case I shall have to punish you severely. You will write me
+out the Greek numerals ten times, and show them up to me on Tuesday."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"That will do."
+
+At the door Dunstable paused.
+
+"Well, Dunstable?" said Mr. Day.
+
+"Er--I'm glad you've got his autograph after all, sir," he said.
+
+Then he closed the door.
+
+As he was going to bed that night, Dunstable met the house-master on
+the stairs.
+
+"Dunstable," said Mr. Day.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"On second thoughts, it would be better if, instead of the Greek
+numerals ten times, you wrote me the first ode of the first book of
+Horace. The numerals would be a little long, perhaps."
+
+
+
+
+PILLINGSHOT, DETECTIVE
+
+
+Life at St. Austin's was rendered somewhat hollow and burdensome for
+Pillingshot by the fact that he fagged for Scott. Not that Scott was
+the Beetle-Browed Bully in any way. Far from it. He showed a kindly
+interest in Pillingshot's welfare, and sometimes even did his Latin
+verses for him. But the noblest natures have flaws, and Scott's was no
+exception. He was by way of being a humorist, and Pillingshot, with
+his rather serious outlook on life, was puzzled and inconvenienced by
+this.
+
+It was through this defect in Scott's character that Pillingshot first
+became a detective.
+
+He was toasting muffins at the study fire one evening, while Scott,
+seated on two chairs and five cushions, read "Sherlock Holmes," when
+the Prefect laid down his book and fixed him with an earnest eye.
+
+"Do you know, Pillingshot," he said, "you've got a bright, intelligent
+face. I shouldn't wonder if you weren't rather clever. Why do you hide
+your light under a bushel?"
+
+Pillingshot grunted.
+
+"We must find some way of advertising you. Why don't you go in for a
+Junior Scholarship?"
+
+"Too old," said Pillingshot with satisfaction.
+
+"Senior, then?"
+
+"Too young."
+
+"I believe by sitting up all night and swotting----"
+
+"Here, I say!" said Pillingshot, alarmed.
+
+"You've got no enterprise," said Scott sadly. "What are those?
+Muffins? Well, well, I suppose I had better try and peck a bit."
+
+He ate four in rapid succession, and resumed his scrutiny of
+Pillingshot's countenance.
+
+"The great thing," he said, "is to find out your special line. Till
+then we are working in the dark. Perhaps it's music? Singing? Sing me
+a bar or two."
+
+Pillingshot wriggled uncomfortably.
+
+"Left your music at home?" said Scott. "Never mind, then. Perhaps it's
+all for the best. What are those? Still muffins? Hand me another.
+After all, one must keep one's strength up. You can have one if you
+like."
+
+Pillingshot's face brightened. He became more affable. He chatted.
+
+"There's rather a row on downstairs," he said. "In the junior day-room."
+
+"There always is," said Scott. "If it grows too loud, I shall get in
+amongst them with a swagger-stick. I attribute half my success at
+bringing off late-cuts to the practice I have had in the junior
+day-room. It keeps the wrist supple."
+
+"I don't mean that sort of row. It's about Evans."
+
+"What about Evans?"
+
+"He's lost a sovereign."
+
+"Silly young ass."
+
+Pillingshot furtively helped himself to another muffin.
+
+"He thinks some one's taken it," he said.
+
+"What! Stolen it?"
+
+Pillingshot nodded.
+
+"What makes him think that?"
+
+"He doesn't see how else it could have gone."
+
+"Oh, I don't--By Jove!"
+
+Scott sat up with some excitement.
+
+"I've got it," he said. "I knew we should hit on it sooner or later.
+Here's a field for your genius. You shall be a detective. Pillingshot,
+I hand this case over to you. I employ you."
+
+Pillingshot gaped.
+
+"I feel certain that's your line. I've often noticed you walking over
+to school, looking exactly like a blood-hound. Get to work. As a start
+you'd better fetch Evans up here and question him."
+
+"But, look here----"
+
+"Buck up, man, buck up. Don't you know that every moment is precious?"
+
+Evans, a small, stout youth, was not disposed to be reticent. The gist
+of his rambling statement was as follows. Rich uncle. Impecunious
+nephew. Visit of former to latter. Handsome tip, one sovereign.
+Impecunious nephew pouches sovereign, and it vanishes.
+
+"And I call it beastly rot," concluded Evans volubly. "And if I could
+find the cad who's pinched it, I'd jolly well----"
+
+"Less of it," said Scott. "Now, then, Pillingshot, I'll begin this
+thing, just to start you off. What makes you think the quid has been
+stolen, Evans?"
+
+"Because I jolly well know it has."
+
+"What you jolly well know isn't evidence. We must thresh this thing
+out. To begin with, where did you last see it?"
+
+"When I put it in my pocket."
+
+"Good. Make a note of that, Pillingshot. Where's your notebook? Not
+got one? Here you are then. You can tear out the first few pages, the
+ones I've written on. Ready? Carry on, Evans. When?"
+
+"When what?"
+
+"When did you put it in your pocket?"
+
+"Yesterday afternoon."
+
+"What time?"
+
+"About five."
+
+"Same pair of bags you're wearing now?"
+
+"No, my cricket bags. I was playing at the nets when my uncle came."
+
+"Ah! Cricket bags? Put it down, Pillingshot. That's a clue. Work on
+it. Where are they?"
+
+"They've gone to the wash."
+
+"About time, too. I noticed them. How do you know the quid didn't go
+to the wash as well?"
+
+"I turned both the pockets inside out."
+
+"Any hole in the pocket?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, when did you take off the bags? Did you sleep in them?"
+
+"I wore 'em till bed-time, and then shoved them on a chair by the side
+of the bed. It wasn't till next morning that I remembered the quid was
+in them----"
+
+"But it wasn't," objected Scott.
+
+"I thought it was. It ought to have been."
+
+"He thought it was. That's a clue, young Pillingshot. Work on it.
+Well?"
+
+"Well, when I went to take the quid out of my cricket bags, it wasn't
+there."
+
+"What time was that?"
+
+"Half-past seven this morning."
+
+"What time did you go to bed?"
+
+"Ten."
+
+"Then the theft occurred between the hours of ten and seven-thirty.
+Mind you, I'm giving you a jolly good leg-up, young Pillingshot. But
+as it's your first case I don't mind. That'll be all from you, Evans.
+Pop off."
+
+Evans disappeared. Scott turned to the detective.
+
+"Well, young Pillingshot," he said, "what do you make of it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"What steps do you propose to take?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You're a lot of use, aren't you? As a start, you'd better examine the
+scene of the robbery, I should say."
+
+Pillingshot reluctantly left the room.
+
+"Well?" said Scott, when he returned. "Any clues?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You thoroughly examined the scene of the robbery?"
+
+"I looked under the bed."
+
+"_Under_ the bed? What's the good of that? Did you go over every inch
+of the strip of carpet leading to the chair with a magnifying-glass?"
+
+"Hadn't got a magnifying-glass."
+
+"Then you'd better buck up and get one, if you're going to be a
+detective. Do you think Sherlock Holmes ever moved a step without his?
+Not much. Well, anyhow. Did you find any foot-prints or tobacco-ash?"
+
+"There was a jolly lot of dust about."
+
+"Did you preserve a sample?"
+
+"No."
+
+"My word, you've a lot to learn. Now, weighing the evidence, does
+anything strike you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You're a bright sort of sleuth-hound, aren't you! It seems to me I'm
+doing all the work on this case. I'll have to give you another leg-up.
+Considering the time when the quid disappeared, I should say that
+somebody in the dormitory must have collared it. How many fellows are
+there in Evans' dormitory?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Cut along and find out."
+
+The detective reluctantly trudged off once more.
+
+"Well?" said Scott, on his return.
+
+"Seven," said Pillingshot. "Counting Evans."
+
+"We needn't count Evans. If he's ass enough to steal his own quids, he
+deserves to lose them. Who are the other six?"
+
+"There's Trent. He's prefect."
+
+"The Napoleon of Crime. Watch his every move. Yes?"
+
+"Simms."
+
+"A dangerous man. Sinister to the core."
+
+"And Green, Berkeley, Hanson, and Daubeny."
+
+"Every one of them well known to the police. Why, the place is a
+perfect Thieves' Kitchen. Look here, we must act swiftly, young
+Pillingshot. This is a black business. We'll take them in alphabetical
+order. Run and fetch Berkeley."
+
+Berkeley, interrupted in a game of Halma, came unwillingly.
+
+"Now then, Pillingshot, put your questions," said Scott. "This is a
+black business, Berkeley. Young Evans has lost a sovereign----"
+
+"If you think I've taken his beastly quid----!" said Berkeley warmly.
+
+"Make a note that, on being questioned, the man Berkeley exhibited
+suspicious emotion. Go on. Jam it down."
+
+Pillingshot reluctantly entered the statement under Berkeley's
+indignant gaze.
+
+"Now then, carry on."
+
+"You know, it's all rot," protested Pillingshot. "I never said
+Berkeley had anything to do with it."
+
+"Never mind. Ask him what his movements were on the night of the--what
+was yesterday?--on the night of the sixteenth of July."
+
+Pillingshot put the question nervously.
+
+"I was in bed, of course, you silly ass."
+
+"Were you asleep?" inquired Scott.
+
+"Of course I was."
+
+"Then how do you know what you were doing? Pillingshot, make a note of
+the fact that the man Berkeley's statement was confused and
+contradictory. It's a clue. Work on it. Who's next? Daubeny. Berkeley,
+send Daubeny up here."
+
+"All right, Pillingshot, you wait," was Berkeley's exit speech.
+
+Daubeny, when examined, exhibited the same suspicious emotion that
+Berkeley had shown; and Hanson, Simms, and Green behaved in a
+precisely similar manner.
+
+"This," said Scott, "somewhat complicates the case. We must have
+further clues. You'd better pop off now, Pillingshot. I've got a Latin
+Prose to do. Bring me reports of your progress daily, and don't
+overlook the importance of trifles. Why, in 'Silver Blaze' it was a
+burnt match that first put Holmes on the scent."
+
+Entering the junior day-room with some apprehension, the sleuth-hound
+found an excited gathering of suspects waiting to interview him.
+
+One sentiment animated the meeting. Each of the five wanted to know
+what Pillingshot meant by it.
+
+"What's the row?" queried interested spectators, rallying round.
+
+"That cad Pillingshot's been accusing us of bagging Evans' quid."
+
+"What's Scott got to do with it?" inquired one of the spectators.
+
+Pillingshot explained his position.
+
+"All the same," said Daubeny, "you needn't have dragged us into it."
+
+"I couldn't help it. He made me."
+
+"Awful ass, Scott," admitted Green.
+
+Pillingshot welcomed this sign that the focus of popular indignation
+was being shifted.
+
+"Shoving himself into other people's business," grumbled Pillingshot.
+
+"Trying to be funny," Berkeley summed up.
+
+"Rotten at cricket, too."
+
+"Can't play a yorker for nuts."
+
+"See him drop that sitter on Saturday?"
+
+So that was all right. As far as the junior day-room was concerned,
+Pillingshot felt himself vindicated.
+
+But his employer was less easily satisfied. Pillingshot had hoped that
+by the next day he would have forgotten the subject. But, when he went
+into the study to get tea ready, up it came again.
+
+"Any clues yet, Pillingshot?"
+
+Pillingshot had to admit that there were none.
+
+"Hullo, this won't do. You must bustle about. You must get your nose
+to the trail. Have you cross-examined Trent yet? No? Well, there you
+are, then. Nip off and do it now."
+
+"But, I say, Scott! He's a prefect!"
+
+"In the dictionary of crime," said Scott sententiously, "there is no
+such word as prefect. All are alike. Go and take down Trent's
+statement."
+
+To tax a prefect with having stolen a sovereign was a task at which
+Pillingshot's imagination boggled. He went to Trent's study in a sort
+of dream.
+
+A hoarse roar answered his feeble tap. There was no doubt about Trent
+being in. Inspection revealed the fact that the prefect was working
+and evidently ill-attuned to conversation. He wore a haggard look and
+his eye, as it caught that of the collector of statements, was
+dangerous.
+
+"Well?" said Trent, scowling murderously.
+
+Pillingshot's legs felt perfectly boneless.
+
+"_Well_?" said Trent.
+
+Pillingshot yammered.
+
+"_Well_?"
+
+The roar shook the window, and Pillingshot's presence of mind deserted
+him altogether.
+
+"Have you bagged a sovereign?" he asked.
+
+There was an awful silence, during which the detective, his limbs
+suddenly becoming active again, banged the door, and shot off down the
+passage.
+
+He re-entered Scott's study at the double.
+
+"Well?" said Scott. "What did he say?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Get out your note-book, and put down, under the heading 'Trent':
+'Suspicious silence.' A very bad lot, Trent. Keep him under constant
+espionage. It's a clue. Work on it."
+
+Pillingshot made a note of the silence, but later on, when he and the
+prefect met in the dormitory, felt inclined to erase it. For silence
+was the last epithet one would have applied to Trent on that occasion.
+As he crawled painfully into bed Pillingshot became more than ever
+convinced that the path of the amateur detective was a thorny one.
+
+This conviction deepened next day.
+
+Scott's help was possibly well meant, but it was certainly
+inconvenient. His theories were of the brilliant, dashing order, and
+Pillingshot could never be certain who and in what rank of life the
+next suspect would be. He spent that afternoon shadowing the Greaser
+(the combination of boot-boy and butler who did the odd jobs about the
+school house), and in the evening seemed likely to be about to move in
+the very highest circles. This was when Scott remarked in a dreamy
+voice, "You know, I'm told the old man has been spending a good lot of
+money lately...."
+
+To which the burden of Pillingshot's reply was that he would do
+anything in reason, but he was blowed if he was going to cross-examine
+the head-master.
+
+"It seems to me," said Scott sadly, "that you don't _want_ to
+find that sovereign. Don't you like Evans, or what is it?"
+
+It was on the following morning, after breakfast, that the close
+observer might have noticed a change in the detective's demeanour. He
+no longer looked as if he were weighed down by a secret sorrow. His
+manner was even jaunty.
+
+Scott noticed it.
+
+"What's up?" he inquired. "Got a clue?"
+
+Pillingshot nodded.
+
+"What is it? Let's have a look."
+
+"Sh--h--h!" said Pillingshot mysteriously.
+
+Scott's interest was aroused. When his fag was making tea in the
+afternoon, he questioned him again.
+
+"Out with it," he said. "What's the point of all this silent mystery
+business?"
+
+"Sherlock Holmes never gave anything away."
+
+"Out with it."
+
+"Walls have ears," said Pillingshot.
+
+"So have you," replied Scott crisply, "and I'll smite them in half a
+second."
+
+Pillingshot sighed resignedly, and produced an envelope. From this he
+poured some dried mud.
+
+"Here, steady on with my table-cloth," said Scott. "What's this?"
+
+"Mud."
+
+"What about it?"
+
+"Where do you think it came from?"
+
+"How should I know? Road, I suppose."
+
+Pillingshot smiled faintly.
+
+"Eighteen different kinds of mud about here," he said patronisingly.
+"This is flower-bed mud from the house front-garden."
+
+"Well? What about it?"
+
+"Sh--h--h!" said Pillingshot, and glided out of the room.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well?" asked Scott next day. "Clues pouring in all right?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"What? Got another?"
+
+Pillingshot walked silently to the door and flung it open. He looked
+up and down the passage. Then he closed the door and returned to the
+table, where he took from his waistcoat-pocket a used match.
+
+Scott turned it over inquiringly.
+
+"What's the idea of this?"
+
+"A clue," said Pillingshot. "See anything queer about it? See that
+rummy brown stain on it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Blood!" snorted Pillingshot.
+
+"What's the good of blood? There's been no murder."
+
+Pillingshot looked serious.
+
+"I never thought of that."
+
+"You must think of everything. The worst mistake a detective can make
+is to get switched off on to another track while he's working on a
+case. This match is a clue to something else. You can't work on it."
+
+"I suppose not," said Pillingshot.
+
+"Don't be discouraged. You're doing fine."
+
+"I know," said Pillingshot. "I shall find that quid all right."
+
+"Nothing like sticking to it."
+
+Pillingshot shuffled, then rose to a point of order.
+
+"I've been reading those Sherlock Holmes stories," he said, "and
+Sherlock Holmes always got a fee if he brought a thing off. I think I
+ought to, too."
+
+"Mercenary young brute."
+
+"It has been a beastly sweat."
+
+"Done you good. Supplied you with a serious interest in life. Well, I
+expect Evans will give you something--a jewelled snuff-box or
+something--if you pull the thing off."
+
+"_I_ don't."
+
+"Well, he'll buy you a tea or something."
+
+"He won't. He's not going to break the quid. He's saving up for a
+camera."
+
+"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
+
+Pillingshot kicked the leg of the table.
+
+"_You_ put me on to the case," he said casually.
+
+"What! If you think I'm going to squander----"
+
+"I think you ought to let me off fagging for the rest of the term."
+
+Scott reflected.
+
+"There's something in that. All right."
+
+"Thanks."
+
+"Don't mention it. You haven't found the quid yet."
+
+"I know where it is."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Fool," said Scott.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+After breakfast next day Scott was seated in his study when
+Pillingshot entered.
+
+"Here you are," said Pillingshot.
+
+He unclasped his right hand and exhibited a sovereign. Scott inspected
+it.
+
+"Is this the one?" he said.
+
+"Yes," said Pillingshot.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"It _is_. I've sifted all the evidence."
+
+"Who had bagged it?"
+
+"I don't want to mention names."
+
+"Oh, all right. As he didn't spend any of it, it doesn't much matter.
+Not that it's much catch having a thief roaming at large about the
+house. Anyhow, what put you on to him? How did you get on the track?
+You're a jolly smart kid, young Pillingshot. How did you work it?"
+
+"I have my methods," said Pillingshot with dignity.
+
+"Buck up. I shall have to be going over to school in a second."
+
+"I hardly like to tell you."
+
+"Tell me! Dash it all, I put you on to the case. I'm your employer."
+
+"You won't touch me up if I tell you?"
+
+"I will if you don't."
+
+"But not if I do?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And how about the fee?"
+
+"That's all right. Go on."
+
+"All right then. Well, I thought the whole thing over, and I couldn't
+make anything out of it at first, because it didn't seem likely that
+Trent or any of the other fellows in the dormitory had taken it; and
+then suddenly something Evans told me the day before yesterday made it
+all clear."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"He said that the matron had just given him back his quid, which one
+of the housemaids had found on the floor by his bed. It had dropped
+out of his pocket that first night."
+
+Scott eyed him fixedly. Pillingshot coyly evaded his gaze.
+
+"That was it, was it?" said Scott.
+
+Pillingshot nodded.
+
+"It was a clue," he said. "I worked on it."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Politeness of Princes, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
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