Part 6 (1/2)
”You'll be right enough if you don't go sticking on side. Don't forget that, however much of a blood you may have been at that rotten little private school of yours, you're not one at Eckleton.”
”All right.”
”You look clean, which is the great thing. There's nothing much wrong with you except cheek. You've got enough of that to float a s.h.i.+p. Keep it under.”
”All right. Keep your hair on.”
”There you go,” said the expert, with gloomy triumph. ”If you say that sort of thing at Eckleton, you'll get jolly well sat on, by Jove!”
”Bai Jove, old chap!” murmured the younger brother, ”we're devils in the Forty-twoth!”
The other, whose chief sorrow in life was that he could not get the smaller members of the family to look with proper awe on the fact that he had just pa.s.sed into Sandhurst, gazed wistfully at the speaker, but, realising that there was a locked door between them, tried no active measures.
”Well, anyhow,” he said, ”you'll soon get it knocked out of you, that's one comfort. Look here, if you do get sc.r.a.pping with anybody, don't forget all I've taught you. And I should go on boxing there if I were you, so as to go down to Aldershot some day. You ought to make a fairly decent featherweight if you practise.”
”All right.”
”Let's know when Eckleton's playing Haileybury, and I'll come and look you up. I want to see that match.”
”All right.”
”Good-bye.”
”Good-bye, Tom.”
”Good-bye, Tom, dear.”
Chorus of aunts and other supers: ”Goodbye, Tom.”
Tom (comprehensively): ”G'bye.”
The train left the station.
Kennedy, the head of Dencroft's, said that when he wanted his study turned into a beastly furnace, he would take care to let Spencer know.
He pointed out that just because it was his habit to warm the study during the winter months, there was no reason why Spencer should light the gas-stove on an afternoon in the summer term when the thermometer was in the eighties. Spencer thought he might want some m.u.f.fins cooked for tea, did he? Kennedy earnestly advised Spencer to give up thinking, as Nature had not equipped him for the strain. Thinking necessitated mental effort, and Spencer, in Kennedy's opinion, had no mind, but rubbed along on a cheap subst.i.tute of mud and putty.
More chatty remarks were exchanged, and then Spencer tore himself away from the pleasant interview, and went downstairs to the junior study, where he remarked to his friend Phipps that Life was getting a bit thick.
”What's up now?” inquired Phipps.
”Everything. We've just had a week of term, and I've been in extra once already for doing practically nothing, and I've got a hundred lines, and Kennedy's been slanging me for lighting the stove. How was I to know he didn't want it lit? Wish I was f.a.gging for somebody else.”
”All the while you're jawing,” said Phipps, ”there's a letter for you on the mantelpiece, staring at you?”
”So there is. Hullo!”
”What's up? Hullo! is that a postal order? How much for?”