'But how about tomorrow?'
'Oh, I shan't be there,' he said, as if it were the most ordinary of
statements.
'Not there! Why, have you been sacked?'
This really seemed the only possible explanation. Such an event would
not have come as a surprise. It was always a matter for wonder to me
_why_ the authorities never sacked Bradshaw, or at the least
requested him to leave. Possibly it was another case of the ass and the
bundles of hay. They could not make up their minds which special
misdemeanour of his to attack first.
'No, I've not been sacked,' said Bradshaw.
A light dawned upon me.
'Oh,' I said, 'you're going to slumber in.' For the benefit of the
uninitiated, I may mention that to slumber in is to stay in the House
during school on a pretence of illness.
'That,' replied the man of mystery, with considerable asperity, 'is
exactly the silly rotten kid's idea that would come naturally to a
complete idiot like you.'
As a rule, I resent being called a complete idiot, but this was not the
time for asserting one's personal dignity. I had to know what
Bradshaw's scheme for evading the examination was. Perhaps there might
be room for two in it; in which case I should have been exceedingly
glad to have lent my moral support to it. I pressed for an explanation.
'You may jaw,' said Bradshaw at last, 'as much as you jolly well
please, but I'm not going to give this away. All you're going to know
is that I shan't be there tomorrow.'
'I bet you are, and I bet you do a jolly rank paper too,' I said,
remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to
which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance,
always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre
chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an
empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He took me up at once.
'What'll you bet?' he said.
Now I was prepared to wager imaginary sums to any extent he might have
cared to name, but as my actual worldly wealth at that moment consisted
of one penny, and my expectations were limited to the shilling
pocket-money which I should receive on the following Saturday--half of
which was already mortgaged--it behoved me to avoid doing anything rash
with my ready money. But, since a refusal would have meant the downfall
of my arguments, I was obliged to name a figure. I named an even
sixpence. After all, I felt, I must win. By what means, other than
illness, could Bradshaw possibly avoid putting in an appearance at the
Thucydides examination?
'All right,' said Bradshaw, 'an even sixpence. You'll lose.'
'Slumbering in barred.'
'Of course.'
'Real illness barred too,' I said. Bradshaw is a man of resource, and
has been known to make himself genuinely ill in similar emergencies.
'Right you are. Slumbering in and real illness both barred. Anything
else you'd like to bar?'