Chapter IV: Part I: Boys (2)

Just after first lesson, as Tod was hurrying from one classroom to another, he met the principal in the corridor, who bade him ask his form-master to come and speak to him at a quarter past ten. Further down the corridor Tod met his twin, who instantly demanded what the “Pot” wanted, and on being informed, went upon his way.

Peter might have been seen to stop more than one schoolfellow as he went--the corridor was full of boys changing classrooms--and when he reached his own he delivered a message to the effect that the Head would like to see his form-master at ten-fifteen.

Peter’s form-master, familiarly known as “Pig-Face,” from a fancied resemblance to that animal in the matter of nose, is a testy man, much given to abusing his form and to the use of opprobrious epithets seriously reflecting upon the veracity of boys in general; so, on receipt of the Head’s message, he knuckled Peter’s head, called him a “shuffling little beast,” set a complicated sum in discount for his form to wrestle with during his absence, and hurried away, fuming inwardly at the unreason of such a summons in the middle of morning school. When he arrived at the principal’s room he found six other masters also in waiting, but the principal himself was not there.

It happened that that gentleman had met Tod’s form-master three minutes after he had seen Tod, he said what he had to say there and then in the corridor, and dismissed the matter from his mind.

The seven masters waited in a grumpy group for ten good minutes, when, just as they had decided upon immediate departure, the principal himself rushed in and gazed in somewhat indignant astonishment at the assembled multitude.

It took nearly five minutes more to explain the situation, and the only boy whose conduct in delivering the various messages seemed not wholly inexplicable appeared to be Peter. For the principal good-naturedly came to the conclusion that it must have been Peter that he met, not Tod, and that Peter had misunderstood him.

Such a charitable view of Peter’s conduct, however, could not last long, seeing that six angry masters rushed back to their respective forms to inflict lines upon six perfectly innocent boys, who were not slow to protest that the message was entrusted to them by another.

During the morning three young gentlemen from the Modern and four from the Classical received a summons “to the principal at twelve,” and of course Tod and Peter were of the number, both looking so seraphically innocent that the principal was perfectly sure that it was “a put-up thing.” In this instance the innocent suffered with the guilty, for Tod got five hundred lines as well as Peter. But they both agreed that to have so scored off seven “brushers” at one time was well worth the lines.

Three days afterward Tod’s nose bled toward the end of morning school and he was dismissed to his house to clean up. As he raced along the corridor he noticed that the door of the little room into which the rope of the school bell descended was left open, and, peeping in, he discovered that Hooper, the trusty porter, was not within.

In far less time than it takes to write the words, Tod had rushed in, and the great school bell that dismisses morning school rang loud and clear over the peaceful playing-fields surrounding the school buildings, still humming with the busy life within.

Every boy and every master stopped short in what he was doing and looked at the clock. Those possessed of watches consulted them, shook them, listened to them, dubiously pressing them to unbelieving ears. And as the clocks in that school are by no means beyond reproach, being worked by a system of electricity that is, to say the least of it, capricious in its conduct, all came, not unwillingly, to the conclusion that morning work had indeed ended. Only the Head of the Modern, that man of iron endurance, whose whole scheme of creation seemed bounded by the exigencies of the Civil Service Commissioners, refused to believe that his watch was wrong, and continued to discuss the “directrix and eccentric” of a certain angle until it was really twelve o’clock; while one of the French masters, hailing from Geneva, proclaimed the unreliability of English clocks in general.

Meanwhile Hooper, who had gone down to the lodge to speak to his wife, could hardly believe his ears when his own sacred bell clanged, somewhat irresponsibly and gaily it is true, without his agency.

He rushed up the drive to discover the perpetrator of this extraordinary outrage, only to meet a throng of masters and boys streaming out into the playground full twenty minutes before the appointed hour.

Tod was nearly at his house by this time, and when he did arrive, hastened to the matron to descant upon the terrific hemorrhage that had occurred in his nose.

But Nemesis was never very leaden-footed where the twins were concerned.

“Other chaps,” Tod remarked mournfully, “can break all sorts of rules and do no end of mischief and never get found out, but if we do the least little thing someone’s certain to be down on us like a hundred of bricks, or else we’re obliged to own up to save somebody else.”

In this case it was the latter course that Tod had to pursue. The principal was exceedingly angry at such a wanton curtailment of the last hour of morning school, and gave it out in the afternoon that if the amateur bellringer did not disclose himself that very day, the whole school should stay in on the next half-holiday; and the frost had broken and football was in full swing once more.

Of course Tod sought the principal at the earliest opportunity and owned up.

When he appeared in the principal’s room after afternoon school he made, it is true, a valiant effort to present himself with due solemnity, but his round face was absurdly chubby and cheerful, and when the principal looked up from the letter he was writing to see who the intruder was, he sighed deeply.

“You again, Beaton!” he exclaimed wearily. “So it was _you_, was it, who rang that bell? What on earth did you do it for?”

“My nose bled, sir....” Tod began eagerly.

“What had your nose to do with it?”

“Everything, sir. I was sent out of class....”

“Sent out of class?” the principal repeated sternly.

“Because I made such a mess,” Tod hastened to add; “and the little door was open--and so I rang the bell.”

“Beaton, when will you cease to play these senseless and annoying tricks? Your folly caused six hundred boys, to say nothing of the masters, to lose twenty precious minutes. If I punished you as you deserve, you ought to stay in for twenty minutes each day for six hundred days....”

Tod gasped.

“But I won’t do that. Instead, you must do a thousand lines, to be given up by the end of this week. I shall not cane you, as I have no doubt you would infinitely prefer it.”

A good many boys assisted to write those lines, and the impost was given up at its appointed time.

Hockey leagues were on and Peter was playing in his house team. On the morning of the last practice before an important match, he acknowledged so barely bowing an acquaintance with certain French idioms beloved of the French master--for was he not their author?--that Peter was told to stay in after morning school and learn them.

Peter did nothing of the kind; on the contrary, he went out at the usual hour and played hockey with his accustomed vigor, with the result that the French master sent for him that afternoon to know why he had not done as he was told.

Peter pleaded “a very important engagement,” and, on being pressed to disclose the nature of that same, as usual answered quite truthfully. The French master, not unnaturally exasperated, forthwith reported him to the Head of the Modern, with the result that Peter was hauled up and bidden to stay in on the next half-holiday; the very half-holiday on which his house was to play its bitterest rival.

During the remainder of that term he got into several rows with his form-master, and Tod was equally unlucky, so that by the time the Easter holidays arrived both boys were quite ready for them and left school vowing vengeance on their persecutors.

Their parents were in India, so they went to spend the holidays with a jolly young bachelor uncle, who was an ardent fisherman and carried both the boys off with him for three weeks’ peel-fishing in a remote village in North Wales. He was also of a literary turn, that uncle, and took with him a box of books to enliven their evenings: lots of Kipling and Stevenson, and amongst the latter the “Life and Letters.” He read aloud the “Thomas Libby” incident, where Stevenson and certain kindred spirits roused a whole neighborhood to excitement by constant inquiries as to the whereabouts of one “Thomas Libby,” who existed only in his creator’s vivid imagination. That of the twins was immediately fired by an ambition to go and do likewise.

The incident, or rather series of incidents, to which the non-appearance of Mr. Libby led up, enchanted them. They chuckled over the mysterious Thomas for a whole day, but it was not till evening, at bedtime, that Tod whispered to Peter how, like “Sentimental Tommy,” he had “found a way.”

Sitting on the side of his bed, he announced gleefully: “Tell you what it is, Peter, we’ll be a parent! A parent with a delicate kid! And we’ll write long-winded letters in scratchy, small handwriting, you know, like the masters write....”

“But,” Peter interrupted excitedly, “how are we to get the answers? It wouldn’t be any fun if we didn’t.”

“The answers,” Tod replied calmly, “will come to the post office here, where we’re living, you juggins! You bet there’ll be answers. They’re awfully keen after the oof at the good old school. Why, they scent a new boy a mile off. He shall go into old Pig-Face’s house, just to pay him out for all his beastliness to you, and I’ll pester the Head about him and his delicate chest, and all that sort of rot that parents _do_ write, don’t you know.”

Peter gasped. “But how can he ‘go’ into anybody’s house if there isn’t a him to go?”

“What an ass you are, Peter! _Was_ there a Thomas Libby? And how many people’s houses was he going to, pray?”

“Go on,” said Peter humbly, “go on.”

“The parent’s name,” Tod announced proudly, “is Theopompus Buggins.”

“Theopompus!” Peter echoed dubiously. “It doesn’t sound very real somehow--and is the kid to be young Theopompus?”

“No,” said Tod firmly, “_his_ name is Archibald, and Mr. Buggins is his uncle.”

“I thought he was to be a parent,” Peter objected in a dissatisfied voice.

“Well, an uncle is a sort of parent; probably the kid’s an orphan.”

There was silence for a minute while Peter digested this view of the matter. But still he was not quite satisfied, for presently he said: “Tod, would _you_ believe in anyone called ‘Theopompus Buggins’?”

“Well, no, I’m not sure that I would,” Tod admitted. “Why?”

“D’you believe the Head will?”

“I never thought of that.”

“I think,” Peter suggested beguilingly, “that we had better have a commoner name, don’t you?”

“P’r’aps we had,” Tod sighed. “Let’s have Jones--Theopompus Jones, now.”

“Jones is all right,” Peter allowed graciously, “but I don’t fancy Theopompus much, it’s such a peculiar name.”

“It’s a splendid name,” Tod exclaimed huffily, “but of course if you think it’s too uncommon he can be ‘T. Jones, Esq.,’ or ‘John Jones’ if you insist upon it. How would you like ‘Peter Jones’?”

“T. Jones will do spiffingly,” Peter answered with some haste. “_We’ll_ know his name is Theopompus right enough, and it don’t matter a hang to them whether he’s Theobald or Theophilus or anything; but I say, Tod, must he be an uncle?”

“Yes,” Tod replied firmly, “he jolly well must, and, what’s more, he’s got to be going to Injia just as term begins. We’ll look out the sailings in uncle’s paper and choose his ship. He’ll just get there in the hot weather, but that can’t be helped.”

The twins were well acquainted with the whereabouts of “sailings” in the papers, as most Anglo-Indian children are.

“Why, you’ve planned it all, Tod,” Peter said admiringly. “How’ll you do about the writing?”

“I shall write as like old Stinks as possible, that niggly, scrabbly sort of writing, _you_ know.”

“By Jove! So you can--that’ll be all right. Parents and people call that sort of writing ‘scholarly,’ but if we did it they’d say we were beastly illiterate or something.”

“What I like about a scholarly handwriting,” said Tod thoughtfully, “is that no mortal can tell whether the spelling’s right or not. When I’m once through the Shop I shall always write a scholarly hand and not bother about spelling and that any more.”

“Boys,” a voice called from the next room, “you get to bed and don’t keep jawing all night.”

* * * * *

It would not be fair to disclose the exact spot in Wales from which that anxious relative, Mr. T. Jones, indited his first letter to the headmaster of the Public School which reckoned Tod and Peter among its pupils.

“There are several L’s in the place where he dwells,
And of W’s more than one.”

but it is impossible to be more explicit than this.

The Principal of Harchester School was at breakfast in his hotel at the seaside when a letter marked “urgent” and “if away please forward immediately” reached him. He turned it over thoughtfully before opening it, for he thought he recognized the handwriting of one of his masters (familiarly referred to by Tod and Peter as “old Stinks”), a science master, much given to drawing his attention to various details by means of lengthy epistles.

“What in the world can Neatby want now?” he wondered, “and in the holidays, too; it really is a little too bad!”

On opening the letter, however, he found that it was not from Mr. Neatby, and set himself forthwith to decipher a missive in which the margins were clear and spacious as the writing was small and obscure. Yet it had the air, so the principal remarked to himself, of being the letter of an educated man. Tod had played the “scholarly” game with entire success.

The letter was as follows:

“DEAR SIR,

“I am desirous that my only nephew, Archibald Jones, aged thirteen
years and six months, should be enrolled among the pupils of your
famous seminary at the commencement of the summer session. But
before placing him under your benignant charge there are several
points upon which I am desirous of enlightenment. Certain friends
have recommended to me the house of one Mr. Mannock, but from
other sources I have gathered that he is a man of somewhat violent
temper, sometimes almost abusive, in his intercourse with the boys.
Is this so? Because, if it is, I shall require to seek some other
house in which to place my nephew, an orphan of extremely sensitive
disposition, with a weak chest. It is possible that the accounts
I have heard of Mr. Mannock’s violence may be exaggerated, and I
should like Archibald to enter his house unless you especially warn
me against it. I wish my nephew to be entered upon the Classical
side, as I am given to understand that boys are less overworked in
that department than in that where they prepare for the Army. And
as his delicate chest will prevent my nephew joining in the rougher
sports of his contemporaries, I would suggest that one of the younger
masters should be told off to take Archibald for a walk every fine
day, as, of course, a certain amount of fresh air and exercise is
essential. He must not be placed in too high a class, as owing to
illness he has not been able to make such rapid progress in his
studies as his robuster contemporaries.

“Any information that you can afford me--and as early an answer as
possible, for I am leaving England at the beginning of May and wish
to see my dear nephew comfortably settled before I sail--will greatly
oblige

“Yours truly,
“T. JONES.”

Tod had written “yours turly,” but was corrected by Peter, who, if he had less sense of style, was fairly dependable where spelling was concerned.

Now the postmistress, their landlady, found her household duties so much increased by the presence of her lodgers that she was fain to depute her official cares to her daughter, Katie, a damsel who greatly admired the good-looking twins. And when they confided to her that if a letter came addressed to “T. Jones, Esq.” it really was for one of them, she asked no questions, required no further information, but, concluding that it was only a part of their mysterious charm to receive letters in a name other than their own, promised to guard the same should it come, without pointing out to anybody that just then no person of the name of Jones was residing at the post office.

The letter came in two days and ran as follows:

“DEAR SIR,

“I enclose the entrance form to be filled up by any parent or
guardian desirous of placing a boy at Harchester School. With regard
to the house in which you wish your nephew to board, Mr. Mannock’s
is, as I hope are all our houses, entirely satisfactory. But if
your nephew is, as you imply, a delicate boy, I would suggest that
he should be placed in one of the smaller boarding-houses, as he
would then receive more individual attention than it is possible to
bestow in a house where there are some fifty boys. I have asked the
bursar to send you a prospectus, in which you will find the names
and addresses of all the masters in the school who take boys; and
lest the house you select should be already full, I advise you to
communicate with the master at your earliest convenience.”

When Mr. Theopompus Jones in the dual shape of Tod and Peter received this missive they retired to a distant bridge, whereon they sat to read it, and they laughed so much that they nearly fell over backward into the river. They gloated over the very envelope. But later on, when their first glee at getting an answer at all had somewhat abated, they expressed disappointment that the Head had omitted to answer so many of their questions.

“You see,” Peter cried indignantly, “what a shufflin’ old hypocrite he is. You can’t get a straight answer from him about old Pig-Face, and he knows what an old brute he is just as well as we do.”

“Shall we send dear Archibald into one of the smaller houses?” Tod asked thoughtfully.

“No,” Peter thundered. “He’s going to old Pig-Face, and to no one else. Who knows but he may save some decent chap from going there? Let’s write again to the Pot, it’s such a lark, he answers so nice and quick. Why, there’s over a fortnight more of the holidays; we can get a whole volume of his oily old letters by that time. I’ve always wondered how humbugs like him manage to grease up to one’s people so, and for the life of me I can’t see why now.”

That night the twins again engaged in literary labors, much to their uncle’s surprise, but he was an ardent bridge player, and, having found three like-minded anglers at the village inn, he was glad to leave his lively nephews so peacefully employed.

“Are you chaps writing a story?” he asked that evening as he departed to his bridge.

“Yes,” “No,” the twins answered simultaneously, then Tod answered with some decision: “No, Uncle Frank, we’re writing letters, business letters, that’s all.”

“Dear me,” their uncle replied, much impressed, and, having a peace-loving and incurious disposition, he asked no further questions and was soon contentedly playing a “no trumps” hand with conspicuous success.

A day or two later the headmaster of Harchester sighed gently as he found beside his plate at breakfast another bulky epistle from the anxious-minded Mr. T. Jones. This time that gentleman did not content himself with generalities; he made the most searching inquiries as to the disposition of the aforesaid Mr. Mannock.

After thanking the headmaster of Harchester for his “polite letter” (the headmaster raised his eyebrows as he reached this phrase), Mr. Jones continued:

“I fear that I cannot fall in with your suggestion of a private
boarding-house for my dear nephew. In the first place it is too
expensive, and in the second place I wish him to go into Mr.
Mannock’s house if you can satisfy me that he is of the considerate
and forbearing disposition that a man placed in his responsible
position ought to be. I am pressed for time, as I sail on May 1st for
Bombay, and an early answer will greatly oblige.

“Yours truly,
“T. JONES.”

Tod and Peter had the very greatest fun in filling in the form of application. They had long ago decided that the youthful Archibald was to enter on the Classical side, that he was destined for the Church, that his father was “deceased,” but as to the late gentleman’s profession they squabbled. Peter wanted Army or Indian Civil; Tod was in favor of Navy or Church; when Peter suddenly recollected that there were “lists and things” in most of the recognized professions and that an “inquisitive old buffer like the Pot would be certain to look him up.”

Finally they decided that the deceased one had better be a “merchant.” Peter wanted to add “prince,” but Tod, the far-seeing, pointed out that such affluence would hardly coincide with an objection to one of the smaller boarding-houses on the score of expense.

Finally they despatched their entrance form “to the bursar,” elaborately filled up in the scholarly handwriting of Mr. Theopompus Jones, the handwriting that so puzzled the Principal of Harchester by its haunting resemblance to that of one of his masters.

Again the Pot was prompt and courteous, and by return the twins were gloating over another letter, which, however, again disappointed them by its brevity.

“DEAR SIR (it ran),

“As your time in this country is indeed getting short, I would advise
you at once to confer personally with Mr. Mannock as to whether he
can find room for your nephew or not; for, in the event of his having
no vacancy, you still may be enabled to place the boy in one of the
other houses.”

“Oh, the shuffler!” Peter shouted indignantly. “The quibbler! The sanctimonious humbug! _He_ thinks he’s diddled Theopompus Jones, does he? He’ll find out his mistake before very long; it’ll be Theopompus Jones has diddled _him_. I wouldn’t trust that man with a bad halfpenny. He can’t answer a straight question, that’s what he can’t do--and yet to hear him talk....”

“I say,” interrupted Tod, “suppose they send in the bill, what’ll we do?”

“You don’t propose we should pay it, do you, you young ass?” Peter returned scornfully. “They never send ’em in till just before term, sometimes not till after. Don’t you remember how the pater grumbled last autumn because it _didn’t_ come, and he wanted everything settled up before he sailed?”

“So does Mr. Jones want it all settled before he sails,” Tod remarked gaily. “He ought to write to old Pig-Face to-night.”

This the dual Mr. Jones did, and, as before, received an answer by return of post from Mr. Mannock, who, strange to say, had just one vacancy, and expressed his willingness that Archibald Jones should fill that same. And Mr. T. Jones, refraining from further researches into the character of Mr. Mannock, wrote with his own scholarly hand, or rather hands, a letter which announced the pending arrival of Archibald.

By this time the holidays were nearly over, and the twins began to be somewhat anxious as to the termination of Mr. Jones’ correspondence with the authorities at Harchester School. But their good genius did not desert them at the last moment, for just the day before they left Wales, when they were at their wits’ end for a satisfactory ending to the episode, they came across the “List of Members” of their uncle’s club; and, idly turning over the leaves, Tod found that there were no fewer than thirteen members of the same surname as the anxious uncle of their creation and three of them had “T” for their initial. Instantly Tod’s resource was stimulated, and he despatched three letters in the most scholarly of handwritings to his headmaster, to Mr. Mannock, and to the bursar respectively, announcing his immediate departure for London and requesting that all future communications might be addressed to him at the club in question.

In his letter to Mr. Mannock, he informed him that Archibald would be sent one day earlier than that given for the return of the other boys, as he, Mr. Jones, would be so much occupied in arrangements for his voyage that he would be unable to give the boy the careful supervision his sensitive disposition and delicate health demanded.

“We shan’t see their pompous old letters and bills and things,” sighed Peter, “but it will liven up the Jones fraternity at uncle’s club--it’s a good thing he’s not going back to town just yet, or he might hear something--and Pig-Face will simply raise Cain when that precious Archibald mysteriously disappears. We’re sure to hear about that, anyway; two of his chaps are in my form, jolly decent chaps they are, too.”

“Mind you never _ask_ anything about it,” said Tod warningly. “They might suspect something, and if we were ever found to have had any hand in this we’d be sacked, sure as a gun. We’ve had our fun and now we must jolly well keep it dark. By the time it’s all finished I should say both the Head and old Pig-Face will have done their thousand lines apiece, shouldn’t you?”

* * * * *

“Curious thing that fellow never turning up, isn’t it?” one of the “decent chaps” in Mr. Mannock’s house remarked to Peter, some three days after term had begun. “Pig-Face is in an awful stew about it--afraid the boy’s been murdered or something.”

“What boy? What d’you mean?” Peter asked innocently. “Who hasn’t come back?”

“No one hasn’t come back; it’s a new chap hasn’t turned up at all. Both he and his people have mysteriously disappeared, vamoosed, vanished! Awfully funny thing. There’s no end of a fuss.”

“P’r’aps he changed his mind at the last minute,” Peter suggested. “P’r’aps he heard something about old Pig-Face and funked it.”

“I don’t know,” said the other. “Old Pig-Face looks awfully worried. Shouldn’t wonder if we had detectives down, and all sorts of games.”

Peter looked thoughtful for a minute, and then, to the astonishment of his friend, who was really impressed by the enigma, doubled up with uncontrollable laughter.

The assistance of Scotland Yard, however, was not called in; for, on writing to the Bishop and Admiral given as references by Mr. T. Jones (boldly lifted, address and all, from “Who’s Who,” by the ingenious Tod), the headmaster of Harchester received an emphatic disclaimer from each of these gentlemen of any knowledge of any such person. Moreover, an inquiry at the post office of the Welsh village from which Mr. Jones’ letters were dated only elicited the laconic response of “Gone away--address not known.”

Katie had received and faithfully followed her instructions.

Every Jones of the whole thirteen in that club was approached in vain, and inquiry at the shipping office only elicited the fact that, plentiful as persons bearing that patronymic appeared to be, no passenger of that name had sailed by that particular boat.

The authorities at Harchester came to the unwelcome conclusion that they had been hoaxed; and all that remained of the incident were certain letters, treasured, on the one hand for purposes of possible identification, on the other for more frivolous reasons.

“TONY”

Tony sat in the gutter, wondering what would be the coolest thing to do. The front doors of all the houses in the dull, quite respectable street, wherein he dwelt, were close shut, as were also the white-curtained windows, lest dust should blow in and sully these hall-marks of houses that possess a front “best room.” The neighboring children were all away; some at the recreation ground, some to paddle their feet in the nearest approach to a river the town boasted--a little muddy stream about a foot deep at the best of times; now a sort of pea soup.

But on this August afternoon Tony felt too slack and too sticky to seek any amusement that necessitated a walk; so, having been thrust out of the back door by his mother, who was washing and wanted no boys “clutterin’ round”--he strolled lanquidly to the front, quite sure that here, at any rate, he would be left in peace, as the dwellers in Eva Terrace never used their front doors except on Sundays.

Just then a man carrying a bag came running down the road, which was a short cut to the station.

“Here, youngster!” he shouted, throwing the bag to Tony. “Carry this for me, and I’ll just do it! Run after me for all you’re worth!”

Tony caught the bag dexterously and ran. He could run faster than the man, and was soon jogging on ahead of him. At the station Tony got sixpence for his pains, thrust it deep into his right trouser pocket, and walked soberly away.

Infinite possibilities were opened up by this unexpected windfall, and he had no intention of mentioning it at home. His people were poor, but not poorer than their neighbors; his brothers and sisters were all older than he, and in his case Benjamin’s lot was not accompanied by the advantages with which it is generally accredited.

A lonely child was Tony, gentle and biddable enough, quick at his books, and happiest in his school hours, when people let him alone, and he succeeded in pleasing the clever, testy schoolmaster, whose life was embittered by a constant struggle with an overwhelming desire to whack the young demons who tormented him. He had been “summonsed” twice by irate parents; so now he restrained himself at the expense of his teaching powers and his nerves generally.

Tony stopped in the middle of the road and smacked his pocket.

“I’ll go to the baths to-morrow morning,” he said aloud, “and see them young nobs swim; it’s only threepence before nine.”

A great excitement--unshared, unmentioned--had lately come into Tony’s life. Every morning for the last week, about eight o’clock he had watched for two boys who went by on bicycles with towels strapped on to their handle-bars. One was quite a little boy, far less than Tony himself; the other bigger, and in his eyes less interesting; and in a few minutes after them came one for whom Tony had conceived the extravagant, unreasoning admiration children will sometimes lavish on somebody with whom they have never exchanged, or hope to exchange, two words; someone unconscious of their existence as they are the richer for that other’s.

Everybody in Tony’s locality knew the recruiting sergeant by sight: “Sergeant” who taught drill and gymnastics to all the “young gen’lemen” in the neighborhood. But Tony adored him, not only because he was so tall and good looking--and Tony was strenuously certain that it is a goodly thing to be upstanding and to have broad shoulders, instead of the champagne-bottle variety carried by his brothers and their like--but because he knew that the sergeant wished him well; inasmuch as that he, even he also, was one of the hundred and fifty odd boys in the parish schools of St. James’s. For now that the war fever was somewhat abating, now that Sergeant himself had come back from the front that he might send more soldiers out there, he had offered to drill the boys in St. James’s schools twice a week for love. And it could not be arranged.

The authorities, while granting the utility of algebra and French to those in the seventh standard, who were presently to form the bulk and bulwark of the nation, saw no good reason why an attempt should be made to give them straight backs and broad chests. So Sergeant, who loved his country, and was, in his way, something of a philanthropist, sighed and swore, and “put the question by.”

But Tony, who had heard the subject canvassed, and listened to the lamentations of the boys, was filled with a passion of gratitude, which found no expression save in a constant hanging round corners to see his idol pass.

* * * * *

Tony sat on his bed naked, in a patch of moonlight, admiring his own legs.

“My body be whiter nor theirn,” he said to himself, and indeed, his limbs looked radiantly fair in the mellow light. “But my arms beant so ’ard as ’is’n for all ’e be such little chap,” he continued, pinching the soft flesh of the upper arm in a dissatisfied way.

Tony was too excited to sleep just yet--such a great deal had happened in the last two days. In all his ten years he had never felt as he felt now--and yet, from an outsider’s point of view, what a little thing it was!

The day before he had gone to the swimming bath, intending just to watch. It was empty, save for Sergeant and the two boys who went with him every morning. The water looked so clear, and there seemed so much room in the big bath, that Tony undressed and went in.

He paddled shyly about in the shallow end, admiring the two boys, who dived off the spring-board and the pulpit and swam under water, while Sergeant roared directions at them, and flung them head over heels in the deep end, in a fashion that filled Tony with surprise.

The big boy was practising side-stroke, when the little one, whom Sergeant, for some reason or other, called the “swashbuckler,” swam down the bath toward Tony, remarking cheerfully:

“You’ll get rheumatism if you paddle so. Shall I show you the first exercise?”

He was such a little boy, but he swam like a frog. His square, freckled face was so friendly that Tony forgot that he himself was an “oik,” and therefore his sworn foe, and said, “Please, sir!” in the meekest of tiny whispers.

“You must kneel on the edge further down, and let me chuck you in,” was the next command--and Sergeant stopped in the very middle of a shout to chuckle and whisper:

“Blest if the swashbuckler isn’t giving a swimming lesson on his own account!”

And now Tony sat on the edge of his bed and remembered two wonderful mornings, and pondered what it could be that made that friendly little boy so different from all the other boys he knew. And through all his thinking, like the refrain of a song, sounded a sentence he had once heard at Sunday school. He could not remember the whole of it; but five words seemed to batter at his brain as though demanding instant comprehension and attention--“_The temple of your body._”

Tony nodded as though in answer to a spoken word. He pictured Sergeant cleaving the water with his long arms, the muscles standing out on his white shoulders.

“I s’pose,” said Tony softly, as if in answer to that unseen, persistent voice, “some folks ’as temples for bodies, and some folks ’as on’y tin churches, or, so to speak, a public.... I’d like a temple myself for ch’ice.”

He was not very sure what a temple was, but in a vague way he _was_ assured that it was something large and beautiful; and his conception was helped out by hazy recollections of Sunday school and Solomon, and thoughts of a building spacious and white.

“There used to be a free night,” he continued, reverting again to the actual, “but the Corpeeration stopped it--I wonder w’y? It’s tuppence after six, that’s a shillin’ a week--’ow can pore boys get that?--an’ I promised ’im as I’d learn the others w’en I could get a chanst, when he’s learned me....”

Tony’s voice faltered, he was getting sleepy. He gave his smooth white arms another stroke, slipped into his nightshirt, and got into bed.

“E’ve give oi a shillin’ to pay for four more mornin’s, till ’e do go away,” he whispered ecstatically as he laid his head on the pillow, and Tony fell asleep.

That evening Tony’s elder brother “Earny,” who cleaned bicycles, and was ’prenticed to a dealer in the neighborhood, wanted his Sunday necktie, for he purposed to “walk out with his young lady.” He ran upstairs to the room he shared with Tony and another brother, to find the little boy fast asleep, worn out by unusual exercise and varied emotions.

Earny could not find his tie, and on lifting Tony’s trousers to see if by any chance it was hidden beneath them, a shilling rolled out of the pocket and finished spinning with a clang, just in the very centre of the patch of moonlight where a quarter of an hour earlier Tony had decided that he, at all events, “would ’ave a temple for ch’ice.”

“’Ullo!” thought Earny to himself, “where did that kid collar a bob? ’E bin a’ter no good, I’ll be boun’, so secret-like and sayin’ nothin’ to nobody. Serve ’im right if I buys some smokes with ’un;” and Earny departed quietly, without having fulfilled his original intention of waking Tony that he might look for the missing necktie.

At nine o’clock the following morning Tony still lay upon his bed, wide-eyed, white-cheeked, with blank despair writ large upon his face. Breakfast was over long ago, his family had all departed to their daily work; his mother was ironing in the kitchen, he could hear the bump of the iron as she slammed it on the table; the bedroom could wait till one of the girls came in at dinner-time, so no one interfered with Tony.

He knew that it was his brother who must have taken the shilling--the precious shilling that had meant so much to him. He knew that he had no redress, no one would believe him if he told them how he came by it, and in his utter misery he was too poor-spirited even to think of reprisals. His whole imagination centred round the dreadful certainty that Sergeant and the little gen’leman and the little gen’leman’s brother would think him a fraud. For a brief space the sun had shone out on his drab life, discovering hitherto undreamt-of colors in the landscape, but now....

“I can never watch for ’em no more,” he said, with a hard, tearless sob.

Presently he stood out on the floor and shook his nightshirt about his feet; he dressed quickly, and did not even wash his face as he was wont to do.

“’Tain’t no use for the likes of me to try,” he said bitterly.

Then he went to his brother’s drawer and stole the bundle of cigarettes he found there, and went out and smoked under the railway bridge till his body was as sick as his heart.

A SQUARE PEG

“I told him plainly beforehand that if he did not get a scholarship this term he must go into business. He has not won a scholarship, and, situated as you are, any other course would be absurd.”

Uncle Henry shut his mouth with a snap, while he stared fixedly over his sister’s head that he might not see the pleading in her eyes as she said timidly:

“But fourteen is so young, Henry, and Rodney is so small for his age----”

“I fail to see that his size has anything to do with it; and you, Felicia, must learn to face things as they are, not as you would have them. If you defer for one moment the chance of Rodney’s making his own living, you are doing an injustice both to him and to his sisters. Pardon my plain speaking, but he is the son of an exceedingly poor widow and must be dealt with accordingly.”

Through the open windows came the sound of a boy’s laughter and the ring of a smartly struck cricket ball. Uncle Henry waved his hand in the direction of the sound, saying:

“There, you see; that’s what his education at present amounts to; he’s a pretty bat, and doubtless looks forward to a life all flannels and cider-cup and yells of admiration when he makes a few runs; the sooner all that nonsense is knocked out of him the better.”

“But Rodney is not idle, Henry,” his mother pleaded; “his form-master and the Head both speak well of him and say that he has a very good chance next year, although he has missed this; you know the exam. came on just after his father’s death, when the boy was dreadfully upset.”

“I have made you an offer, you may take it or leave it. You can put him into one of my businesses; there will be no premium, and I’ll pay for his board at a thoroughly good boarding-house I know of in Mecklenburg Square, where he will be well looked after. In the meantime you must try to let this house, and then you can come up and live in the suburbs, and he can live with you and go to business every day by train; the little girls can go to a High School. With the many claims I have upon me, this is all that I can do, and I must serve you in the way that seems best to me.”

Uncle Henry sat down and took up the newspaper in token that the subject was thoroughly threshed out. He had gone into business at fourteen, and now at little past thirty had a house in Grosvenor Gardens and a “place down the river.” He had married at six-and-twenty, “going where money was.” The names of his two sons were down for Harrow, while his wife already talked of the time when she should “present” their baby girl. He quite acknowledged that it was his duty to help his sister now that the collapse of those Australian banks had practically beggared her; but there was at the back of his mind a lurking satisfaction that the way he had chosen should be one calculated to destroy those castles of tradition her husband had been so fond of building. It was a perpetual annoyance both to his wife and to himself that Rodney and his sisters should be so very different in appearance from their own children; that, clean or dirty, these children without a sixpence should so strongly resemble the old family portraits that his brother-in-law’s ridiculous will forbade to be sold; that they should in speech and bearing so unmistakably be gentlefolk, and yet be his own sister’s children seemed to him a proof of nature’s ineptitude.

To be sure he and Felcourt had been on friendly enough terms, but he had always--though through no fault of Felcourt’s--been conscious that his brother-in-law and his ancestors for generations belonged to a class which only of late, and that not altogether with enthusiasm, has opened its doors to successful men of Uncle Henry’s stamp.

Rodney’s mother went and stood by the open window. The active white figures flying between the wickets on the wide lawn seemed all blurred and indistinct, and she lifted her slim hand to her throat to still its throbbing ache; she was not a strong-minded woman. All she had asked of life was the power to make folks happy, and to be loved; and hitherto her desire had been generously fulfilled. Married at eighteen to a man who, taking her out of somewhat sordid and uncongenial surroundings, made her queen of a household where gaiety and good manners had been vassals for generations, she readily adapted herself to the new atmosphere, and became a sweet-voiced echo of her husband, and for fourteen years was absurdly happy. Then Rodney Felcourt died, and six months afterward came the collapse of the Australian banks.

Uncle Henry had a way of carrying through any course of action he had determined upon, and by the beginning of October his nephew Rodney found himself taking his exercise in the Gray’s Inn Road instead of in the playing-fields at school. The change of life was so radical and so sudden that the child hardly understood what had happened. Like the old woman in the nursery rhyme, he was forever exclaiming, “This be never I!” in melancholy astonishment. He was learning to tie up parcels, he stuck on endless quantities of postage stamps, and occasionally addressed a few envelopes for one of the typists. He did what he was told as well as he could, the day seemed endlessly long, and by evening he was so tired that he went to bed soon after the seven-o’clock dinner. A young boy for his age, he was quite unprecocious and unformed; hitherto his place in the universe had been clearly defined and not difficult to fill; to do well in his form, thus pleasing the “mater” and his form-master, to be “decent” to his little sisters at home, and “jolly” with the chaps at school, to be good at games and get into the “house” eleven, and to be absolutely “straight” in word, deed, and across country--such was Rodney’s conception of the whole duty of boy, and he had acted up to it with considerable success. Now, life was not only complicated but unintelligible, and he was too bewildered even to rebel against a fate that kept him tying up parcels indifferently well when he felt that by all the ordinary standards of conduct he ought to have been writing Latin verses.

Every Sunday he wrote neat, stilted little letters to his mother, which informed her that he had been to church at the Foundling, was going for a walk in the afternoon, that he was well and hoped that she was well, and that he was her very loving son. Felicia crushed the paper against her cheek in the vain attempt to extract from it something real and Rodney-like. She thought of the school letters last term, how full of life they had been, how numerous the requests they contained! Rodney never asked for anything now, and she knew that the boy was holding himself well in hand lest any part of the truth might hurt her.

At the end of October, Cecil Connop came back from Paris. His arrival was announced in all the papers, for he was of some importance in literary circles; his great ability was acknowledged on all sides, the more freely that he was something of a failure. Though his work was widely read and appreciated by cultivated people, he was not popular. His appearance was quite ordinary, and he made no attempt to resemble any historical personage. He abhorred advertisement, considering that his published writings had no sort of connection with his private life. His readers were quite ignorant as to whether he had a mother or not, and his personal friends suffered under no apprehension that their loves or their bereavements would figure, flimsily disguised, in his next book. His rooms in Jermyn Street had never been photographed, and only his servant knew whether he liked his bath hot or cold. The fact was that Cecil Connop kept one face for the world and quite another for the old friends who loved him--a proceeding so out of date among literary people as to be almost medieval. But it has its advantages for such as like curtains to their windows. According to his own account he never had any money, and was, when in England, in hourly danger of Holloway Jail; but he paid his card debts and never seemed to lack any of the things that go toward making life pleasant.

Felicia’s letter announcing little Rodney’s apprenticeship was a great surprise to Cecil. He had, of course, heard of her serious losses, but he knew that her brother was a wealthy man and “people always manage somehow”; that in this case they hadn’t “managed” came upon him with quite an unpleasant shock.

For some reason which she would not define even to herself, Felicia had not asked any of her friends then in town to look up Rodney. She was absolutely certain in her own mind that he had no business there, but circumstances were too strong for her, and she dared not offend Henry. When she read in the paper that Cecil had returned to town she felt distinctly relieved. Here was an understanding person who would ask no questions and could be depended upon to give a faithful account of the child.

Cecil wrote at once to Rodney asking him to lunch at his club on the following Saturday, and to Felicia, to say how pleased he would be to do what he could for him while he was in town.

Rodney sat on the edge of his bed, too tired to undress. His flannels and “sweater” were spread on the pillow, and from time to time the boy laid his face down on them, inhaling the clean, woolly smell. He had of course never worn them since he came to London--Uncle Henry had not thought it necessary to make any arrangement as to how Rodney should spend his Saturdays--yet the sight of them comforted him. He was beginning to employ that saddest of all philosophies, that nothing can take from us the good times we have had. He had eaten hardly anything all day, and the ache in his throat was well nigh intolerable. His door opened, and the maid announced: “A gentleman to see you, sir. Said he’d come up here.”

Cecil had come before his letter. As the open door betrayed the listless little figure with the scattered flannels the whole situation was revealed to him in a flash, and for the hundredth time in a not over well-spent life he cursed the folly which had rendered him so incapable of helping his friends in any material way. When Rodney realized who was his visitor, he simply flung himself bodily upon him, and Cecil Connop, who was tender-hearted and easily touched, kissed him and had been rapturously kissed in return before he had time to consider whether the boy would be offended or not. Then they both sat on the bed and for the first time for six weeks Rodney chattered. One of the boarders, a girl who did typewriting in Chancery Lane, passing his doorway, stopped and smiled as she heard the ripple of Rodney’s laughter; she waited for a full minute, enjoying the unwonted sound, then passed on to her own room unaccountably cheered. People in that house were too busy and too tired to laugh!

When Cecil Connop got back to his rooms he sat and smoked for a long time before he wrote the following letter to Felicia Felcourt:

“To-night I have spent an hour with Rodney, and find him apparently
well and cheerful. I cannot faithfully report upon his appearance,
as it was candle-light and I did not see him very distinctly. He
talked freely enough about you all at home, about his old school,
about myself; but, when I come to think of it, said nothing about
his business. You will, I know, pardon me if I ask you in all
seriousness--is this necessary? The whole time I was with him I had a
curious sense that he was playing truant and ought to be at school;
and there is one thing that an expression in your letter impels me
to say at the risk of being impertinent: no amount of money in the
world is such a possession as the breeding you and his dead father
have given your boy. Forgive this frankness and believe me that I
feel with you the more keenly that I am so conscious of my own gross
impotence to help.”

On Saturdays Rodney left business at one, and on this particular Saturday flew back to “Meck” to change into his “Etons,” when he hied him on the top of an omnibus to lunch with Cecil Connop at his club. When he was seated opposite to his host, that gentleman proceeded to examine him critically. The boy was unmistakably a gentleman: everything about him, from the long slender hands of which he was so unconscious, to the way he looked his companion straight in the eyes, proclaimed him to come of a race who had spent their days otherwise than in tying up parcels. Men passing in and out looked pleasantly at the pretty boy who was so plainly enjoying the unwonted experience; but Cecil noted that he was very thin, that after the first flush of greeting was past the little high-bred face was pale, and that there were black shadows under the long-lashed grey eyes. Moreover, although there was everything for lunch calculated to please a boy, he ate hardly anything.

“Are they decent to you at your place of business?” asked Cecil, carefully pouring cognac into his coffee.