Stalky & Co.

“Yes – oh, yes!”

“You don’t know your mind from one minute to another. You must learn – you must learn.”

“What a bait you’re in!” said Stalky. “Keep your hair on, Beetle.”

“I’ve had it done to me,” said Beetle. “Now – about my being a beast.”

“Pax– oh, pax!” cried Sefton; “make it pax. I’ll give up! Let me off! I’m broke! I can’t stand it!”

“Ugh! Just when we were gettin’ our hand in!” grunted McTurk.

“They didn’t let Clewer off, I’ll swear.”

“Confess – apologize – quick!” said Stalky.

From the floor Sefton made unconditional surrender, more abjectly even than Campbell He would never touch any one again. He would go softly all the days of his life.

“We’ve got to take it, I suppose?” said Stalky. “All right, Sefton. You’re broke? Very good. Shut up, Beetle! But before we let you up, you an’ Campbell will kindly oblige us with ‘Kitty of Coleraine’ —a’ la Clewer.”

“That’s not fair,” said Campbell; “we’ve surrendered.”

“‘Course you have. Now you’re goin’ to do what we tell you – same as Clewer would. If you hadn’t surrendered you’d ha’ been really bullied. Havin’ surrendered – do you follow, Seffy? – you sing odes in honor of the conquerors. Hurry up!”

They dropped into chairs luxuriously. Campbell and Sefton looked at each other, and, neither taking comfort from that view, struck up “Kitty of Coleraine.”

“Vile bad,” said Stalky, as the miserable wailing ended. “If you hadn’t surrendered it would have been our painful duty to buzz books at you for singin’ out o’ tune. Now then.”

He freed them from their bonds, but for several minutes they could not rise. Campbell was first on his feet, smiling uneasily. Sefton staggered to the table, buried his head in his arms, and shook with sobs. There was no shadow of fight in either – only amazement, distress, and shame.

“Ca – can’t he shave clean before tea, please?” said Campbell. “It’s ten minutes to bell.”

Stalky shook his head. He meant to escort the half-shaved one to the meal.

McTurk yawned in his chair and Beetle mopped his face. They were all dripping with excitement and exertion.

“If I knew anything about it, I swear I’d give you a moral lecture,” said Stalky severely.

“Don’t jaw; they’ve surrendered,” said McTurk. “This moral suasion biznai takes it out of a chap.”

“Don’t you see how gentle we’ve been? We might have called Clewer in to look at you,” said Stalky. “‘The bleatin’ of the tiger excites the kid.’ But we didn’t. We’ve only got to tell a few chaps in Coll. about this and you’d be hooted all over the shop. Your life wouldn’t be worth havin’. But we aren’t goin’ to do that, either. We’re strictly moral suasers, Campbell; so, unless you or Seffy split about this, no one will.”

“I swear you’re a brick,” said Campbell. “I suppose I was rather a brute to Clewer.”

“It looked like it,” said Stalky. “But I don’t think Seffy need come into hall with cock-eye whiskers. Horrid bad for the fags if they saw him. He can shave. Ain’t you grateful, Sefton?”

The head did not lift. Sefton was deeply asleep.

“That’s rummy,” said McTurk, as a snore mixed with a sob. “‘Cheek, I think; or else he’s shammin’.”

“No, ‘tisn’t,” said Beetle. “‘When ‘Molly’ Fairburn had attended to me for an hour or so I used to go bung off to sleep on a form sometimes. Poor devil! But he called me a beastly poet, though.”

“Well, come on.” Stalky lowered his voice. “Good-by, Campbell. ‘Member, if you don’t talk, nobody will.”

There should have been a war-dance, but that all three were so utterly tired that they almost went to sleep above the tea-cups in their study, and slept till prep.

“A most extraordinary letter. Are all parents incurably mad? What do you make of it?” said the Head, handing a closely written eight pages to the Reverend John.

“‘The only son of his mother, and she a widow.’ That is the least reasonable sort.” The chaplain read with pursed lips. “If half those charges are true he should be in the sick-house; whereas he is disgustingly well. Certainly he has shaved. I noticed that.”

“Under compulsion, as his mother points out. How delicious! How salutary!”

“You haven’t to answer her. It isn’t often I don’t know what has happened in the school; but this is beyond me.”

“If you asked me I should say seek not to propitiate. When one is forced to take crammers’ pups – ”

“He was perfectly well at extra-tuition – with me – this morning,” said the Head, absently. “Unusually well behaved, too.”

“ – they either educate the school, or the school, as in this case, educates them. I prefer our own methods,” the chaplain concluded.

“You think it was that?” A lift of the Head’s eye-brow.

“I’m sure of it! And nothing excuses his trying to give the College a bad name.”

“That’s the line I mean to take with him,” the Head answered.

The Augurs winked.

A few days later the Reverend John called on Number Five. “Why haven’t we seen you before, Padre?” said they.

“I’ve been watching times and seasons and events and men – and boys,” he replied. “I am pleased with my Tenth Legion. I make them my compliments. Clewer was throwing ink-balls in form this morning, instead of doing his work. He is now doing fifty lines for – unheard-of audacity.”

“You can’t blame us, sir,” said Beetle. “You told us to remove the – er – pressure. That’s the worst of a fag.”

“I’ve known boys five years his senior throw ink-balls, Beetle. To such an one have I given two hundred lines – not so long ago. And now I come to think of it, were those lines ever shown up?”

“Were they, Turkey?’ said Beetle unblushingly.

“Don’t you think Clewer looks a little cleaner, Padre?” Stalky interrupted.

“We’re no end of moral reformers,” said McTurk.

“It was all Stalky, but it was a lark,” said Beetle.

“I have noticed the moral reform in several quarters. Didn’t I tell you you had more influence than any boys in the Coll. if you cared to use it?”

“It’s a trifle exhaustin’ to use frequent – our kind of moral suasion. Besides, you see, it only makes Clewer cheeky.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Clewer; I was thinking of – the other people, Stalky.”