Chapter III (2)

All of which he did, and I left the letter in the usual spot. But Mabel cut him altogether from that day; and he told me girls have no humer and laughed it off, though he felt it a lot, and often smacked my head out of bitterness of mind afterwards, but not hard. He gave me an old knife for a reward, but told me at the same time never to do anything for him again without being commanded.

As for Mabel, she threw over Browne just like she threw over Bradwell, in spite of Bradwell’s letter; and Bradwell said it was a nemmecis, whatever that is; and I had a nemmecis to, because a week afterwards Bradwell threw over me and made young West his fag. I felt hert, but, of corse, that didn’t get known to Bradwell; and if I fag again, I wont so much as make a peece of toste unless I’m commanded to.

Gideon’s Front Tooth

I believe Gideon was the only Jew that ever came to Dunston’s, and I expect, taking it all round, he might have had a better time at a school for Jews in general; though in one way he wouldn’t have done as well, and wouldn’t have had the adventure with old Grimbal, which turned out so splendidly for him when old Grimbal died.

Though easily the richest chap at Merivale, and getting no less than ten shillings a week pocket-money, Gideon was so awfully fond of coin that he hardly spent a penny, and the only thing he did with his money was to lend it to fellows. He didn’t lend it for nothing, having a curious system by which you paid in marbles, or bats, or knives for the money, and, in spite of that, still had to pay back the money itself after a certain time. You signed a paper, and Gideon said that if chaps hadn’t paid back the tin on the dates named it would be very serious for them. But it got serious for him after a bit, because Steggles, who knew quite as much about money as Gideon (though he never had any), borrowed a whole pound once, and promised to pay five shillings for it for one term; and Gideon was new to Steggles then, and agreed. But when the time of payment came, Steggles said that Gideon had better regard it as a bad debt, because he wasn’t going to pay back even the original pound. Then Gideon thought a bit, and asked him why, and Steggles told him. He said: “Because you know jolly well the Doctor doesn’t allow chaps to lend money.”

And Gideon said:

“This is the first time I’ve heard that.”

“Anyway, it’s usury, which is a crime,” said Steggles, “and I’m not going to pay anything; and, being less than twenty-one, you can’t make me; so it amounts to a bad debt, as I told you just now. You’ve done jolly well, one way and another, and you’ve got two bats, and Lord knows how many india-rubber-balls, and cricket-balls, and silver pencils, and knives out of it, including Ashby minor’s watch-chain, which is silver; and if you take my tip you’ll keep quiet, because once all these kids get to know anybody under twenty-one can borrow money without returning it, then it’s all up with your beastly financial schemes.”

Gideon was remarkably surprised to know what a lot Steggles had found out about him, and accused him of looking into his play-chest; and Steggles said he had. Then Gideon went; and about three chaps who had heard the talk told others, and they told still more chaps, until, finally, a good many fellows who owed Gideon money felt there was no hurry about paying it back till it happened to be convenient. In fact, Gideon jolly soon saw he couldn’t do any more good for himself like that, and at the beginning of the next term, when chaps were pretty flush of coin, he wrote up in the gym, “There will be a sale of bats, knives, and other various useful articles, between two and three o’clock, by auction, on Tuesday.--J. GIDEON.”

Somebody tore it down, but not before most fellows had read it; and when Gideon and young Miller, who had a bat in the auction, and hoped to get it back if possible, were seen carrying Gideon’s play-chest to the gym after dinner on the appointed day, of course we went. It passed off very well for Gideon, because the things were really good, and often almost new. He seemed to know all about auctions, and hit the chest with a stump, and explained the things, and what good points they had about them. He only took money down, and I will say nobody could have done it fairer. If a knife had a broken blade, for instance, or a bat was slightly sprung, which happened with one, he always pointed it out, so that nobody could say he had been choused over it. Young Miller got back his bat for four shillings and eightpence; and Ashby minor got back his silver chain for thirteen shillings; but it wasn’t much good to him, because, in order to raise the thirteen bob, he had to raffle the chain at once, at shilling shares; and he took one, hoping to be lucky, but he wasn’t, Fowle unfortunately getting it. Gideon told me afterwards that the sale came out fairly, but not quite what he had hoped. He rather sneered at the Dunston chaps in general, and said they were a poverty-stricken crew; which got me into a bate, and I told him that I’d sooner be the son of an officer in the Royal Navy, which I am, than the biggest Jew diamond dealer in the world, his father being in that profession. He said there was no accounting for tastes, but he should have thought that a man who could deliberately go and be a sailor must be weak in the head. Then I punched him, and he instantly went down and apologized. I may mention that I am Bray, the cock of the Lower School.

Before coming to Gideon’s front tooth, just to let you know exactly the chap he was, I’ll mention another thing he did. An old woman was allowed to bring up fruit and tuck generally, and sell it to us after morning school. Steggles, who knows the reason for pretty nearly everything, said this was permitted by Doctor Dunston to take the edge off our appetites; but anyway, the old woman sold strawberries and raspberries in summer-time, and these were arranged with cabbage-leaves in little wicker baskets at about fourpence each. Well, one day Gideon, who never refused to eat fruit if offered it, but very seldom bought any, asked the old woman what she gave for the wicker baskets, and she said threepence a dozen. Then he asked her what she would give for those which had been used once, and she thought, and said they would be worth at least three halfpence a dozen to her. He didn’t say any more, but after that it was a rum thing how all the used baskets, which generally were seen kicking about the playground in shoals, disappeared. Nobody noticed it at the time, but afterwards we remembered clearly that they _had_ disappeared. And just at the end of the term a chap, hurrying in late after the bell rang, came bang on Gideon and the old woman round a corner out of sight of the gates. And the chap saw Gideon give her a pile of baskets and get three halfpence. Of course, it was the last three halfpence he ever got that way, because when it became known the chaps rendered their baskets useless for commerce in many ways. And Barlow called Gideon “Shylock minor” when he heard that he’d made two shillings and fivepence halfpenny; which name stuck to Gideon forever. And Steggles got nine other chaps to subscribe a penny each and buy a pound of flesh from a butcher’s shop, because in Shakespeare Shylock was death on his pound of flesh. The pound was put under Gideon’s pillow by Steggles himself, and when Gideon shoved his watch under his pillow, which he always did at night, he found it; and Steggles says he turned pale, but read what was pinned on the pound of flesh, and then smiled and wrapped the meat up in a letter from home, and said: “What fools you chaps are, wasting money like that! But it looks all right, and will mean a good feed for nothing.”

Next day he got up very early and took his pound of flesh down to the kitchen and got them to cook it; and he ate about half before breakfast and had the rest cold in his desk during Monsieur Michel’s lesson, which was a safe time. And Steggles said we ought to have gone one better and put poison on it.

The great affair of the tooth came on at the beginning of next term; and first I must tell you that next door to Dunston’s lived an old man, so frightfully ancient that his skin was all shrivelled over his bones. He didn’t like boys much, but he would look over his garden-wall sometimes into our playground and scowl if anybody caught his eye. Various things, of course, went over the wall often, and it was one of the excitements of Dunston’s to go into old Grimbal’s garden and get them back. Twice only he caught a chap, and both times, despite his awful age and yellowness of skin, he thrashed the chap very fairly hard with a walking-stick; but he never reported anybody to Dunston, and it was generally thought he regarded it as a sort of sport hunting for chaps in his garden. Of course, in fair, open hunting he hadn’t a chance, and the two he did catch he got by stealth, hiding behind bushes on a rather dark evening.

Well, the facts would never have been known about this tooth but for Gideon’s mean spirit. It happened to be necessary for him to fight me, and though not caring much about it, he couldn’t help himself. Besides, though the champion of the Lower School, I was tons smaller than Gideon, and Gideon didn’t know till after the fight that I was a champion, the true facts about my greatness being hid from him.

Just before the fight Gideon said: “Oh! my tooth, by the way. It may be hurt, and it cost my father five guineas.” So, to our great interest he unscrewed one of his two top front teeth and gave it to his second. You couldn’t have told it was a sham, so remarkably was it done, and it screwed on to the foundation of the original tooth much like a spike screws into the sole of a cricket-boot. Gideon had fallen down-stairs when he was ten and knocked off half the tooth, so he told us; but Murray, who is well up in science, said that all Jews’ front teeth are rather rocky, because in feudal times they were pulled out with pincers as a form of torture, and to make the Jews give up their secret treasures. Murray said that after many generations of pulling out Nature got sick of it, and that in modern times the front teeth of Jews aren’t worth talking about. Murray is full of rum ideas like that, and he hopes to go in for engineering, having already many secret inventions waiting to be patented.

As to Gideon, I licked him rather badly in two rounds and a half. Then he was mopped up and dressed, and screwed in his front tooth again with the greatest ease.

Once it got known about this tooth, and fellows were naturally excited. Steggles said it was on the principle of a tobacco-pipe mouthpiece; and, finding the chaps were keen to see it, Gideon let it be generally known he would freely show it to anybody for threepence a time, and to friends for twopence. But this was a safe reduction to make, because, properly speaking, he hadn’t any friends. Seeing there were nearly 200 boys at Dunston’s, and that certainly half, including several fellows from the Sixth, took a pleasure in seeing the tooth, and didn’t mind the rather high charge, Gideon did jolly well; and in the case of Nubby Tomkins, he made actually one shilling and threepence; because the tooth had a most peculiar fascination for Nubby, and he saw it no less than five times. After that Gideon made a reduction to him, as well he might. But somehow Slade, the head of the school, was very averse to Gideon’s front tooth when he heard about it, and he decided that there must be no more exhibitions of it for money. He told Gideon so himself.

However, a new boy came a week afterwards and heard about the strangeness of the tooth, and offered a shilling, in three instalments, to see it; which was too much temptation for Gideon, and he showed it, contrary to what Slade had said.

Slade, of course, heard, for the new boy happened to be his own cousin, though called Saunders; and then there was a curious scene in the playground, which I fortunately saw. Slade came up to Gideon in the very quiet way he has, and asked him in a perfectly gentlemanly voice for his front tooth. At first Gideon seemed inclined not to give it up, but he saw what an awfully serious thing that would be, and finally unscrewed it, though not willingly.

“Now,” said Slade, “I’ll have no more of this penny peep-show business at Merivale. I told you once, and you have disobeyed me. So there’s an end of your beastly tooth. What’s this?”

He took something out of his pocket.

“It’s a catapult,” said Gideon.

“It is,” said Slade, “and I’m going to use your tooth instead of a bullet, and fire it into space.”

“It cost five guineas,” said Gideon.

“Don’t care if it cost a hundred,” answered Slade, still in a very gentlemanly sort of way. “We can’t have this sort of thing here, you know.”

Slade was just going to fire into space, as he had said, when a robin suddenly settled within thirty yards of us, on the wall between the playground and old Grimbal’s. Slade being a wonderful shot with a catapult (having once shot a wood-pigeon), suddenly fired at the robin, and only missed it by about four inches. He said the shape of a front tooth was very unfavorable for shooting. But, anyway, the tooth went over into Grimbal’s, and we distinctly heard it hit against the side of his house.

Then Slade went away, and we rotted Gideon rather, because not having the tooth looked rum, and made a difference in his voice. He took it very quietly, and said he rather thought his father would be able to summon Slade; and before evening school, having marked down the spot where he fancied his tooth had hit Grimbal’s house, he went to look with a box of matches. What happened afterwards he told us frankly; and it was certainly true, because, with all his faults, Gideon never lied to anybody.

“I went quietly over, and began carefully looking along the bottom of the wall, using a match to every foot or so,” he said, "and I had done about half when I heard a door open. I then hooked it, and ran almost on to old Grimbal. He had not opened the door at all, but was coming up the garden path at the critical moment. Of course, he caught me. He was going to rub it into me with his stick, when I said I should think it very kind if he would hear me first, as I had a perfectly good excuse for being there.

"He said:

"‘What excuse can you have for trespassing in my garden, you little oily wretch?’

"‘Oily wretch’ was what he called me; and I said that my tooth had been fired into his garden that very day, about half-past one, by a chap with a catapult; and I lighted a match and showed him it was missing.

"He said:

"‘How the deuce are you going to find a tooth in a garden this size?’ And I told him I had marked it down very carefully, and that it had cost five guineas, and that I rather believed my father would be able to summon the chap who had shot it away. He seemed a good deal interested, and said he thought very likely he might, if it was robbery with violence. Then he asked me if I was the boy he had seen beating down the price of a purse at Wilkinson’s in Merivale, and I said I was. Then he said, ‘Come in and have a bit of cake, boy’; and I went in and had a bit of cake, and saw on a shelf in his room about fifty or sixty cricket-balls, and various things which he has collared when they went over. He asked me a lot of questions about different things, and I answered them. All he said was about money. He also asked me to be good enough to value the things he had, which came over the wall from time to time; and I did, and he thanked me. They were worth fifteen shillings and tenpence; and Wright’s ball, which everybody thought was stolen by the milkman, wasn’t, for old Grimbal’s got it; and the milkman should be told and apologized to.

"Well, he knew a lot about money, and told me he had thousands of golden sovereigns, which he makes breed into thousands more.

"He said:

"‘You’re the only boy I ever met with a grain of sense in his head. Now, if I gave you a check on my bankers in Merivale for five pounds to-day, and wrote to you to-morrow morning to say I had changed my mind, what would you do?’

“I said, ‘It would be too late, sir, because your check would have been sent off to my father that very night, to put out at interest for me.’ He said, ‘That’s right. Never give back money, or anything.’ Then he asked me my name, and told me I might come back to-morrow and look for my tooth by daylight.”

That was Gideon’s most peculiar adventure, and, though he never found the tooth or saw old Grimbal again, yet about seven or eight months afterwards, when old Grimbal was discovered all curiously twisted up and dead in bed by the man who took him his breakfast, the result of Gideon’s visit to him came out. Old Grimbal had specially put him into his will by some legal method, and Doctor Dunston had Gideon into his study three days after old Grimbal kicked. It then was proved that old Grimbal had left Gideon all the things that came over the wall, and also a legacy of fifty pounds in money, because, according to the bit of the will which the Doctor read to Gideon out of a lawyer’s letter, he was the only boy old Grimbal had ever met with who showed any intelligence above that of the anthropoid ape.

Gideon returned all the balls and things to their owners free of charge, but not until the rightful owners proved they were so. And the money he sent to his father; and his father, he told me afterwards, was so jolly pleased about the whole affair that he added nine hundred and fifty pounds to old Grimbal’s fifty. Therefore, by shooting Gideon’s front tooth at a robin, Slade was actually putting the enormous sum of one thousand pounds into Gideon’s pocket, which I should think was about the rummest thing that ever happened in the world.

Gideon stopped at Dunston’s one term after that. Then he went away, and, I believe, began to help his father to sell diamonds. He was fairly good at French, and very at German; but of other things he knew rather little, except arithmetic, and his was the most beautiful arithmetic which had ever been done at Merivale; for I heard Stokes, who was a seventeenth wrangler in his time, tell the Doctor so.

The Chemistry Class

This story about Guy Fawkes’s Night at Dunston’s is worth knowing, because it shows the rumminess of Nubby Tomkins. Tomkins, I may say, was called “Nubby,” owing to his nose, which was extremely huge, though he said it was Roman, and swore he wouldn’t change it if he could. Anyway, Bradwell made a rhyme about it that is certainly good enough to repeat. He wrote it first on a black-board with chalk, and a good many chaps learned it by heart.

It ran like this:

“Our Nubby’s nose is ponderous,
And our Nubby’s nose is long;
So it wouldn’t disgrace
Our Nubby’s face
If half his nose was gone.”

Which was not only jolly good poetry, but also true--a thing all poetry isn’t by long chalks, as you can see in Virgil and such like.

Well, Nubbs sang the solos in chapel on Sundays, and people came from far to hear him do it; in consequence of which, so Steggles said, the Doctor favored him, and regarded him as an advertisement to Dunston’s. But his singing wasn’t in it compared with the advertisement he gave the Doctor on Guy Fawkes’s Night the term before Slade left.

To explain the whole tremendous thing I must tell you that Nubbs belonged to the chemistry class. This class, in fact, was pretty well started for him, his father telling Dunston, so Nubbs said, that he shouldn’t send him at all if he couldn’t be taught chemistry; because Nubbs had shown a good deal of keenness for chemicals generally from the earliest days, and bought little boxes of “serpents’ eggs” and red fire instead of sweets ever since he was old enough to buy anything. He had also blown off his eyebrows and eyelashes with a mixture he was grinding up in a mortar, and they had never grown again to this day--all of which things showed he had chemistry in him to a great extent. So the Doctor started a chemistry class, and a chap called Stoddart, from Merivale, came up once a week to take it; and Nubbs joined, and so did I, not because I had chemistry in me worth speaking of, but because I was a chum of Nubby’s. Wilson also joined, and so did Hodges. I may mention my name is Mathers.

I always thought that chemists simply mix the muck doctors give you when you’re queer, but it seems not. In fact, there are several sorts of chemists, and Nubbs said he hoped to belong to the best sort, who don’t have bottles of red and green stuff in the windows, and so on. He said a man who sold pills and tooth-brushes, and liquorice-root and soap, could not be considered a classy chemist. The real flyers made discoveries and froze air, and sneaked one another’s inventions, and got knighted by the Queen if they had luck and if they were well thought of by the newspapers. I should think really Nubbs might come to being knighted if he sticks to it, for even down to the stuff in cough lozenges nothing is hid from him.

Once the matron gave me simply a vile lozenge for my throat, which got a bit foggy owing to falling into the water during “hare and hounds.” Well, the lozenge was white in color, but even a white lozenge may be very decent sometimes, so I took a shot at it going to bed. But it was so jolly frightful to the taste that I chucked it away, and next morning found it again and examined it after drying. On it I then found the words “Chlorate of potash.” So I took it to Nubbs. He said it was certainly a chemical, and added that the stuff in it was almost the same as you make “Pharaoh’s serpents” with. I could hardly believe such a thing, so he lighted the lozenge and it burned blue, and a long, wriggling, brownish ash came curling out of it like a snake, just as Nubby said, which is well worth knowing to anybody who ever has a chlorate of potash lozenge. Many such like remarkable and useful things Nubby could tell you; among others, how to mix sulphur and gunpowder and other ingredients for fireworks. He had, in fact, an awful fine book devoted to the subject, and wooden affairs to load cases; and once when Stoddart didn’t turn up and the Doctor put us on our honor to do the proper things in the laboratory alone, Nubbs finished off analyzing some mess in about five minutes, and spent the complete rest of the time making a rocket. It had four blue stars and thirteen yellow ones, and the case was made out of a stiff brown paper roll in which his mother had that morning sent Nubbs a photograph of her new baby at home. And Nubbs forgot the photograph and stuffed the mixture in upon it, and made a separate compartment for the stars on top. So the photograph of Nubby’s mother’s new baby, curiously enough, went off with the rocket, and was never more seen by mortal eye. Not that Nubbs cared. He kept the rocket till the Doctor’s birthday, and after prayers, when he knew he was in his study, with the windows open and the blinds up, being summer-time, Nubbs let it off in the front garden, and we helped. It turned out very good in a way, though not quite a perfect rocket, because instead of going up it tore along the ground. But it tore for an enormous distance, and then turned and came back all of itself. And the blue stars did not go off, but the yellow ones did--or some--in a bed of rather swagger geraniums, unfortunately.

The Doctor didn’t care much about it, not understanding our motives. But Nubbs explained that he had done it out of honor to the day. Then the Doctor thanked him, and said he had doubtless meant well, and that from the earliest times of the Chinese the pyrotechnist’s art had been employed upon occasions of legitimate festivity and rejoicing.

I mention this because it was the encouragement he had over this creeping rocket that made Nubbs get so above himself, if you understand me. He never forgot it, and next autumn term he actually asked the Doctor if he might have a regular firework display in the playground on the night of the Fifth of November. He asked rather cunningly, just after an English History lesson, during which the Doctor had been slating Guy Fawkes frightfully; and having said such a heap of hard things about the beggar, Doctor Dunston couldn’t very well refuse.

He said:

“Your request is unusual Tomkins; but I can see no objection at the moment. However, I will let you have my answer at no distant date.”

And I said to Nubbs:

“That means he’ll think and think till he’s got a reason why you shouldn’t, and let you know then.”

But Nubbs said to me:

“I believe he’ll let me do it, feeling so jolly bitter as he does about Guy Fawkes.”

And blessed if he didn’t! Nubbs undertook to make the things himself. Nothing was to be bought but chemicals in a raw, unmixed condition, and Doctor Dunston actually headed the subscription list with 2_s._ 6_d._; and Thompson gave the same, and Mannering 2_s._, and “Frenchy” 3_s._ Fifty-two chaps also contributed various sums from 1_s._ to 1_d._; and Nubbs became rather important, and went down gradually to the bottom of the Lower Fifth owing to the strain upon his mind.

He gathered together £2 7_s._ 5_d._ in all, and made it up to £2 10_s._ himself; and Fowle’s father, who was in some business where they used sulphur in terrific quantities, got four pounds weight of it for nothing, and Nubbs said it was a godsend for illuminating purposes. He had been to the Crystal Palace, and told us he was going to carry everything out just like they did there, as far as he could with the money. At the last moment he got a tremendous increase of funds in the shape of a pound from his father; and, strangely enough, it was that extra pound that wrecked him. Without that father’s pound he couldn’t have arranged the principal feature of the whole performance; and without that principal feature nothing in the way of misfortunes to Nubbs worth mentioning would have fallen out. But the pound came, and with it a letter very encouraging to Nubby.

He went on mixing away at the various proper compounds and experimenting with them till he got his rockets to go up like larks and his Roman candles to shoot out stars the length of a cricket pitch. Then his governor’s pound came, and he decided on having a set piece with it. A set piece, Nubby said, is the triumph of the firework maker’s art--and very likely it is in proper hands. You can have likenesses in fire, or words, or ships, or “Fame crowning Virtue,” or, in fact, pretty well anything. A set piece is designed small first, then large; and it is worked out with little tiny things like squibs, only very small and without any bang at the end. These are all lighted off at once, and they burn one color first, then change to another. Nubbs said his would start yellow, because it was cheaper, and finally turn green. The thing was what design to have, and the four chaps in the chemistry class all thought differently. I advised trying a shot at a huge portrait of the Doctor, but when it came to particulars nobody knew how to work a portrait; and Hodges thought we might do something about Guy Fawkes, but Nubbs didn’t care about that. Then Hodges thought again, and suggested the words, “God bless the Doctor,” and I agreed that it would be fine; but Wilson said it was profane, and might annoy the Doctor frightfully, especially when it turned green. Then Nubbs suggested the words, “Doctor Dunston is a Brick!” and Hodges said that it was good, and Wilson said it might be good, but it wasn’t true, anyway. However, it was three to one, though we all admitted that, from his point of view, Wilson was right to hate the Doctor, because the Doctor hates him.

The thing was to make a licking big frame of light wood, and arrange the letters across it, and the note of exclamation at the end. This we did, and hammered it against the playground wall, and wheeled up the screens that go behind the bowler’s arm in the cricket season, and hid away the set piece behind them till the time came. Likewise we arranged stakes for the Roman candles, and a board for the Catharine wheels, and a string for the flying pigeons, and so on. And also we rigged up bits of tin round the playground and by the fir-trees at the top end and behind the gym. These were for Bengal lights and other illuminations. All of this Nubbs had arranged for the paltry sum of £3 10_s._ The chemistry class had a half-holiday as the time drew on, and we worked like niggers, all four of us. Nubbs commanded, so to speak, and mixed and did the grinding and pounding and stars. Hodges and I hammered up the heavy posts and stakes in the playground, and carried out odd jobs generally; and Wilson manufactured cases for everything with brown paper and paste and string.

The set piece took two hundred and thirteen little tubes. These Wilson made in lengths of a yard and cut off at the required size. And Nubbs stuffed them--with green fire first and yellow on top. It promised to be a jolly big thing altogether, and four days before the night Nubbs began to get awfully nervous, and to prepare yards and yards of touch-paper.

And Corkey minimus heard the Doctor say to Browne:

“Really the lads have devoted no little energy and method on their proceedings; and it appears--so Mr. Stoddart tells me--that the boy Tomkins has mixed his compounds quite correctly, thereby insuring that brilliance and variety which is looked for in an exhibition of this kind. I wonder whether we might ask the parents and friends of those who dwell at Merivale and the immediate neighborhood.”

And Browne, who never misses a chance of showing the brute he is at heart, said:

“Really, I should think twice, Doctor Dunston. There is such an element of chance with amateur fireworks. Unfortunately, we can’t have a dress rehearsal, as with the scenes from Shakespeare and the recitations at the end of the term.”

“Nevertheless,” said the Doctor, “I am disposed to run the risk. A little harmless pleasure combined with courtesy to relatives at mid-term is rather desirable than not.”

So about fifty people were asked, and they brought fifty more, and the cads from Merivale got to know too, and there was a good crowd of them along the fence by the gym. Also two policemen came, and Nubbs, who was nervous before, grew much worse when he heard of it. Besides, we had a frightful shock two days before the firework night, owing to the loss of poor old Wilson. By simply sickening luck he got reported by Browne for cheek. It was when Browne came out in a new pair of awfully squeaking boots with sham pearl buttons at the side and drab tops; and Wilson said they were ugly “eighteens” and Browne heard him. The Doctor took an awfully grave view of this, and told Wilson that personality was the vilest kind of cheek. Which wouldn’t have mattered, but he gave him a thousand lines as well, and forbade him to see the fireworks or help any more with them.

“And that’s the man you call a brick!” Wilson said, rather bitterly. It certainly was rough, after the way he had worked; but from the Wing Dormitory, where he would be at the time, he might be able to see pretty well everything by leaning far out between the window bars. Which Nubbs pointed out to him, and he said he should. He also said he’d pay out Browne some day, and very likely Dunston too.

Well, the night came, and it was a fine one; and the cads likewise came and lined the fence. Then the Doctor clapped his hands twice, which was the signal to begin; and just as he did so out burst yellow fire everywhere behind the bits of tin, lighted simultaneously by seven chaps. And everybody seemed to like it; and the Doctor said:

“Capital! Bravo, Tomkins--a pleasing and fairy like conceit!”

Then Nubbs let fly two rockets, and they went up well and burst out in stars, though not as many by any means as we had crammed into them; but one twisted for some reason, and, instead of falling in the direction of the cads, the stick twinkled down, with just a spark of red here and there in the line of it, bang behind the chapel. Both Nubbs and I distinctly heard it go smack through the top of the greenhouse, and I rather think the Doctor heard it too, for he didn’t say “Bravo” or anything, but just sent a kid to tell Nubbs to point future rockets the other way, which disheartened Nubbs, because he’s like a girl at times of great excitement such as this was. But he soon cheered up, especially at the splendid success of the Catherine-wheels, which he hadn’t hoped much from, and at the cheers even the cads gave for the “golden rain” which showed up everything as bright as day, including Maude and the other Dunston girls, and Mrs. Dunston, and Nubby’s father standing smiling very amiably by the Doctor, and the policemen blinking, and the crowd, and a white dab hanging out of a high window afar off, which I saw and knew to be Wilson.

Only the balloon failed, owing to the nervousness of Nubbs, who set fire to the whole show while he was trying to light the spirit on the sponge underneath; but he passed it off with crackers thrown among the kids, and then, while they were all yelling, he dragged away the cricket screens, and Nubbs let off the set piece. He lighted the touch-paper, and it snapped and crackled all over the design in a moment, and a thick smoke rose, and out of it came the set piece flaring in rich yellow fire. Of course, we expected what Nubbs and Wilson had arranged, viz., “Doctor Dunston is a Brick!” but instead there came out these awful words:

“DOCTOR DUNSTON
IS A BRUTE!”

That just shows what a frightful difference three letters will make in a thing; and the night was so dark and the letters so big that you could have read them a mile off. Only, if you will believe it, Dunston didn’t. People applauded like anything at first, till the preliminary smoke cleared off and they read the truth. Then they shut up and made a sound like wind coming through a wood. But the cads yelled and roared, and so did the policemen, for I heard them; and to make the frightful thing a shade more frightful, if possible, the Doctor, who is as blind as ten bats, and didn’t realize the end of the set piece, but only read his name at the top, clapped his hands and said:

“Famous, famous! You excel yourself, Tomkins!”

Then the words began gradually to turn green; and, for that matter, so did Nubbs. In fact, whether it was the reflected light or the condition of his mind, or both, I certainly never saw any chap become so perfectly horrid to look at as Nubbs did then. His nose seemed to stand out like a great green rock, and his eyes bulged, and his chin dropped, and the set piece turned his teeth as bright as precious emeralds. He just merely said, “Good Lord!”--nothing more--then hooked it off into the darkness, simply shattered.

At the same time Stoddart and Thompson, and Mannering and Browne, and some chaps from the Sixth, not knowing what color the beastly set piece might turn next, or how soon the Doctor would spot it, dashed at the thing and dragged it down, and trampled on it; and Browne in the act burned the very boots that Wilson had cheeked, which pleased Wilson a good deal when he heard it.

After that it was all over, and the Doctor, thinking the set piece had died a natural death, so to speak, saw me under the gas-light at the gate, as everybody streamed out, and said:

“Ah, young man, what was that last word in the illumination? I know you and Hodges also had a hand in it, as well as Tomkins.”

And I said:

“Please, sir, we arranged the words ‘Doctor Dunston is a Brick!’”

And he said:

“Excellent! Pithy and concise if a little familiar. I only hope you all echo that sentiment--every one of you. Send Tomkins to me, and tell the other fellows there is cake and lemonade going in the dining-hall.”

Just as if the other fellows didn’t know it! But everybody gave three cheers for the Doctor and Mrs. Dunston, and I started to find Nubbs; and the policemen made the cads go, though they went reluctantly.

I looked long for Nubby, and at last found him all alone in the gym. One bit of candle was burning, which looked frightfully poor after all the brilliance of the fireworks, and Nubbs had got the parallel bars under the flying rings, and was standing on them--I mean the bars.

“What the Dickens are you doing, Nubby?” I said.

And he answered:

“It’s no jolly good attempting to stop me now, because it’s too late. My life is ruined, and my father was there too to see it ruined; and I’m going to hang myself, as every convenience for hanging is here.”

Mind you, he would have done it. Knowing Tomkins as I do, and his great ingeniousness, I don’t mind swearing that he would have been a hung chap in another minute. So I told him; but, though doubtful, he decided to put it off, anyway. I even got him to promise he wouldn’t hang himself at all if his father believed his innocence about the set piece. And Crewe, the head-master under the Doctor, and old Briggs and Thompson got us in a corner--Nubbs and Hodges and me--and we solemnly vowed we knew nothing of it; and Crewe went down to the _Merivale Trumpet_ and made the reporter put in the original words when it came out; and Thompson explained to Mrs. Dunston how some evil-disposed, wicked person had tampered with the set piece, and begged her not to wound the feelings of the Doctor by telling him; and the Sixth hushed it up among the kids; and I sneaked a bit of cake for Wilson, and went up after the row was over and told him everything, down to the burning of Browne’s boots.

He confessed to me then that he had done it, which didn’t surprise me much, knowing how he had worked, and then at the last minute almost been deprived of seeing the show. It was certainly a terrible revenge; but, of course, a terrible revenge which doesn’t come off owing to a master being too shortsighted to see it is pretty sickening for the revenger. Besides the risk.

Mr. Crewe worked like a demon to find out who had done it, and he suspected Wilson from the first, but couldn’t prove it. But at last he did find out through Fowle, who got it out of Ferrars, who got it out of West, who got it out of Nubbs in a moment of rage. For I may say Wilson himself told Nubbs, and Nubbs never forgave him, and says he never shall, even if they ever both go to heaven.

So Crewe, having found out, had some talk with Wilson. But he didn’t lick him; whereas Wilson did lick Fowle, and that pretty badly. Not that Fowle cares for an ordinary licking more than another chap cares for a smack on the head. The only way to hurt him is to twist his arm round, about twice, and then hit him hard just above the elbow. I may say I found this out myself, and everybody does it now.

Doctor Dunston’s Howler

Mind you, if it’s interesting to watch any ordinary person come a howler, what must it be to see your own head-master do it? A “howler,” of course, is the same as a “cropper,” and you can come one at cricket or football or in class or in everyday life.

Dr. Dunston’s howler was a most complicated sort, and I had the luck to be one of the chaps who witnessed him come it. Of course, to see any master make a tremendous mistake is good; but when you are dealing with a man almost totally bald and sixty-two years of age the affair has a solemn side, especially owing to his being a Rev. and a D.D. In fact, Slade, who was with me, said the spectacle reminded him of the depths of woe beggars got into in Greek tragedies, which often wanted half a dozen gods to lug them out of. But no gods troubled themselves about Dunston; and it really was a bit awful looked at from his point of view; because it’s beastly to give yourself away to kids at the best of times; and no doubt to him all of us are more or less as kids, even the Sixth.

He often had a way of bringing the parents of a possible new boy through one or two of the big class-rooms and the chapel of Merivale, just to show what a swagger place it was. Then we all bucked up like mad, and the masters bucked up too, and gave their gowns a hitch round and their mortar-boards a cock up, and made more noise and put on more side generally, just to add to the splendor of the scene from the point of view of the parents of the possible new boy.

Sometimes the affair was rather spoiled by an aunt or mother or some woman or other asking the Doctor homely sort of questions about sanitary arrangements or prayers; then to see old Dunston making long-winded replies and getting even the drains to sound majestic was fine. His manner varied according to the people who came over the school. Sometimes, if it only happened to be a guardian or a lawyer, he was short and stern. Then he just swept along, calling attention to the ventilation and discipline, and looking at the chaps as if they were dried specimens in a museum; but with fathers or women he had a playful mood and an expression known as the “parent-smile.” To mothers he never talked about “pupils,” but called the whole shoot of us “his lads,” and beamed and fluttered his gown, like a hen with chickens flutters its wings. The masters always copied him, and to see that little brute Browne trying to flutter over the kids like a hen when the Doctor came into his class-room was a ghastly sight, knowing him as we did. Also the Doctor would often pat a youngster on the head and beam at him. He generally singled Corkey minimus out for patting and beaming; and Corkey minor said the irony of it was pretty frightful, considering that Corkey minimus, for different reasons, got licked oftener by the Doctor than almost any chap in the Lower School.

Well, one day in came the Doctor to the school-room of the Fourth. I’m in the Sixth myself, and a personal chum of Slade’s, the head of the school; but I happened to have gone to the Fourth with a message, so I saw what happened. A very big man who puffed out his chest like a pigeon followed the Doctor. He had a blue tie on with a jolly bright diamond in it, and there were small purple veins in a regular network over his cheeks, and his mustache was yellowish-gray and waxed out as sharp as pins. A lady followed him with red rims to her little eyes and gold things hanging about her chest. The Doctor, being all arched up and rolled round from the small of the back like a wood-louse, seemed to show they were parents of perhaps more fellows than one. The big chap wore an eye-glass and spoke very loud, and was jolly pleasant.

“Ah!” he said, “and this is where the little boys work, eh? I expect, now, my youngster will be drafted in among these small men, Doctor Dunston?”

“It is very possible--nay, probable in the highest degree, my lord,” said the Doctor. “We are now,” he continued, “in the presence of the Fourth and Lower Fourth. The class-room is spacious, as you see, and new. A commanding panorama of the surrounding country and our playing-fields may be enjoyed from the French windows. If two of you lads will move that black-board from there, Lord Golightly may be able to see something of the prospect.”

Two of the kids promptly knocked down the black-board nearly onto the purple-veined lord’s head. Then suddenly the lady called out and attracted his attention. Looking round, we found she had got awfully excited, and stood pointing straight at young Tomlin. He was a mere kid, at the extreme bottom of the Lower Fourth; but he happened to be my fag, so I was interested. She pointed at him, in the most frantic way, with a hand in a browny-yellow glove, and a gold bracelet outside the glove and a little watch let into the bracelet.

“Good gracious!” she said, “do look Ralph! What an astounding resemblance! Whoever is that boy?”

Tomlin turned rather red in the gills, which was natural.

“Do you know the lad?” asked the Doctor.

“Never saw him before in my life; but I hope he’ll forgive me for being so rude as to point at him in that way,” she said. “He’s exactly like our dear Carlo; they might be twins.”

Tomlin thought she meant a pet dog, and got rather rum to look at.

“Carlo is our son, you know,” explained the lord.

“Singular coincidence,” answered Doctor Dunston, not looking very keen about it. In fact, he wasn’t too fond of Tomlin at any time, and seemed sorry he should be dragged in now. But the kid was a very tidy sort, really--Captain of the Third Footer Eleven and a good runner. He happened to be the son of a big London hatter who had a shop of enormous dimensions in Bond Street; and the Doctor was said to get his own hats there; yet he didn’t like Tomlin.

Tomlin went out into the open, and the purple-veined lord shook hands with him, and the lord’s wife stood him in the light and turned him round to catch different expressions. Then they admitted that the likeness was really most wonderful, and they both hoped Tomlin and Carlo would be great friends. Tomlin, told by the Doctor to answer, stood on one leg, twisted his arms in a curious way he’s got when nervous, and said he hoped they might be; but he said it as though he knew jolly well they wouldn’t.

Then the lord and the lady cleared out, and a week later Carlo came. His real name was Westonleigh, and he was a viscount or something, being eldest son of an earl; but we called him Carlo, and he grew jolly waxy when he found his nickname had got to Merivale before him. He fancied himself to a most hideous extent for a kid of nine, and explained he’d only come for a year or so before going to Eton. He went into the Lower Fourth, so Tomlin ceased to be at the bottom of that class.

The likeness between Carlo and my fag was really most peculiar. It must have been for Carlo’s own mother to see it; but when Carlo heard that Tomlin would be a hatter in the course of years he refused to have anything to do with him. And Tomlin loathed Carlo, too, from the start; so instead of being chums according to the wish of the purple-veined lord, they hated one another, and the first licking of any importance which Carlo got he had from Tomlin.

The chap was a failure all round, and it’s no good saying he wasn’t. Everybody saw it but Doctor Dunston, and he wouldn’t. Carlo proved to be a sneak and a liar of the deepest sort--not to masters, but to the chaps; and he was also jolly cruel to animals, and very much liked to torture things that couldn’t hit him back, such as mice and insects. He had a square face and snubby nose, and a voice and eyes exactly similar to Tomlin’s; but there was no likeness in their characters, Tomlin being a very decent kid, as I have said. Fellows barred Carlo all round, and he only had one real chum in the miserable shape of Fowle. Fowle sucked up to him and listened for hours about his ancestors, and buttered him at all times, hoping, of course, that some day he would get asked to Carlo’s father’s castle in the holidays. I may also note Carlo never played games, excepting tossing behind the gymnasium for half-pennies with Fowle and Steggles, Steggles, of course, winning.

Happening one day to go down through the playground, young Tomlin saw Westonleigh near a little fir-tree which grew at the top of the drill-ground. He was alone, and seemed to be doing something queer, so Tomlin stopped and went over.

“What are you up to?” he said.

“Frying ants,” said Carlo, “though it’s no business of yours. You see, there’s turpentine juice come out of this tree where I cut it yesterday, and you can stick the ants in it, then fry them to a cinder with a burning-glass, like this.”

“That’s what you’re doing?”

“It is.”

“Don’t you think you’re rather a little beast?”

“What d’ you mean, hatter?”

“I mean I’m going to kick you for being such a cruel beast.”

They stood the same height to an inch and were the same age, so it was a perfectly sportsman-like thing for Tomlin to offer.

“You seem to forget who you’re talking to,” said Carlo.

“No, I don’t--no chance of that. Your ancestors came over with William the Conqueror--carried his portmanteau, I expect, then cleared out when the fighting came on. Yes, and another ancestor stabbed a friend of Wat Tyler’s when he was face down on the ground, after somebody else had knocked him over. That’s what you are, ant-fryer.”

“I’ll thank you to let me pass,” said Carlo. “I’m not accustomed to talking to people like you, and if you think I’m going to fight with a future hatter you’re wrong.”