Part 2 (1/2)

But Mr Frampton had no idea of being forgotten. He had the schoolmaster's virtue of enthusiasm, but he lacked the schoolmaster's virtue of patience. He hated the dry-rot like poison, and could not rest till he had ripped up every board and rafter that harboured it.

Any ordinary reformer would have been satisfied with the week's work he had already accomplished. But Mr Frampton added yet another blow at the very heart of the dry-rot before the week was out.

On the day before the football match Bolsover was staggered, and, so to speak, struck all of a heap by the announcement that in future the school tuck-shop would be closed until after the dinner hour!

Fellows stared at one another with a sickly, incredulous smile when they first heard the grim announcement and wondered whether, after all, the new head-master _was_ an escaped lunatic. A few gifted with more presence of mind than others bethought them of visiting the shop and of dispelling the hideous nightmare by optical demonstration.

Alas! the shutters were up. Mother Partridge was not at the receipt of custom, but instead, written in the bold, square hand of Mr Frampton himself, there confronted them the truculent notice, ”The shop will for the future be open only before breakfast and after dinner.”

”Brutal!” gasped Farfield, as he read it. ”Does he mean to starve us as well as drown us?”

”Hard lines for poor old Mother Partridge,” suggested Scarfe.

This cry took. There was somehow a lurking sense of shame which made it difficult for Bolsover to rise in arms on account of the injury done to itself. Money had been wasted, appet.i.tes had been lost, digestions had been ruined in that shop, and they knew it.

If you had put the question to any one of the boys who crowded down, hungry after their bath, to breakfast on the day of the football match, he would have told you that Frampton was as great a brute as ever, and that it was a big shame to make fellows play whether they liked it or not. For all that, he would tell you, _he_ was going to play, much as he hated it, to avoid a row. And if you had pressed him further he would have confided to you that it was expected the School would beat the Sixth, and that he rather hoped, as he must play, he would get a chance at the ball before the match was over. From all which you might gather that Bolsover was reluctantly coming round to take an interest in the event.

”Fortune favours the brave,” said Mr Steele, one of his a.s.sistants, to the head-master at dinner-time. ”You have conquered before you have struck, mighty Caesar.”

Mr Frampton smiled. He was flushed and excited. Two days ago he had seemed to be committed to a desperate venture. Now, a straight path seemed to open before him, and Bolsover, in his enthusiastic imagination, was already a reformed, reinvigorated inst.i.tution.

”Yes, Steele,” said he, as he glanced from the window and watched the boys trooping down towards the meadow. ”This day will be remembered at Bolsover.”

Little dreamed the brave head-master how truly his prophecy would be fulfilled.

An arrangement had been made to give the small boys a match of their own. The young gladiators themselves, who had secretly wept over their impending doom, were delighted to be removed beyond the reach of the giants of the Sixth. And the leaders of the School forces were devoutly thankful to be disenc.u.mbered of a crowd of meddlesome ”kids” who would have spoiled sport, even if they did not litter the ground with their corpses.

The sight of the new goal posts and ball, which Mr Freshfield, a junior master, was heard to explain was a present from the head-master to the school, had also a mollifying effect. And the bracing freshness of the air and the self-respect engendered by the sensation of their flannels (for most of the players had contrived to provide themselves with armour of this healthy material) completed their reconciliation to their lot, and drove all feelings of resentment against their tyrant, for the present at any rate, quite out of their heads.

In a hurried consultation of the seniors, Farfield, who was known to be a player, was nominated captain of the senior force; while a similar council of war among the juniors had resulted in the appointment of Ranger of the Fifth to lead the hosts of the School.

Mr Freshfield, with all the ardour of an old general, a.s.sisted impartially in advising as to the disposition of the field on either side; and, for the benefit of such as might be inexperienced at the game, rehea.r.s.ed briefly some of the chief rules of the game as played under the Rugby laws.

”Now, are you ready?” said he, when all preliminaries were settled, and the ball lay, carefully t.i.tled, ready for Farfield's kick-off.

”Wait a bit,” cried some one. ”Where's Jeffreys?”

Where, indeed? No one had noticed his absence till now; and one or two boys darted off to look for him.

But before they had gone far a white apparition appeared floundering across the meadow in the direction of the goals; and a shout of derisive welcome rose, as Jeffreys, arrayed in an ill-fitting suit of white holland, and crowned with his blue flannel cap, came on to the scene.

”He's been sewing together the pillow-cases to make his trousers,” said some one.

”Think of a chap putting on his dress s.h.i.+rt to play football in,” cried another.

”Frampton said we were to wear the oldest togs we'd got,” said a third, ”not our Sunday best.”

Jeffreys, as indeed it was intended, heard these facetious remarks on his strange toilet, and his brow grew heavy.

”Come on,” said Scarfe, as he drew near, ”it wasn't fair to the other side for you not to play.”