"Master Greenfield, junior, is to go to the head master's study at
half-past nine," called out Mr Roach, the school porter, putting his
head into the dormitory, at seven o'clock next morning.
Stephen had been up an hour, making fearful and wonderful shots of
answers to his awful questions, half of which he had already ticked off
as done for better or worse. "If I write _something_ down to each,"
thought he to himself, "I might happen to get one thing right; it'll be
better than putting down no answer at all."
"Half-past nine!" said he to Paul, on hearing this announcement; "_ten_
was the time I was told."
"Who told you?"
"The gentleman who gave me my paper."
"What paper? you don't have papers. It's _viva voce_."
"I've got a paper, anyhow," said Stephen, "and a precious hard one, too,
and I've only half done it."
"Well, you'll have to go at half-past nine, or you'll catch it," said
Paul. "I say, there's Loman calling you."
Stephen, who, since the indignation meeting last night, had felt himself
grow very rebellious against the monitors, did not choose to hear the
call in question, and tried his hardest to make another shot at his
paper. But he could not keep deaf when Loman himself opened the door,
and pulling his ear inquired what he meant by not coming when he was
told? The new boy then had to submit, and sulkily followed his lord to
his study, there to toast some bread at a smoky fire, and look for about
half an hour for a stud that Loman said had rolled under the chest of
drawers, but which really had fallen into one of that gentleman's boots.
By the time these labours were over, and Stephen had secured a mouthful
of breakfast in his brother's study, it was time to go down to prayers;
and after prayers he had but just time to wonder what excuse he should
make for only answering half his questions, when the clock pointed to
the half-hour, and he had to scuttle off as hard as he could to the
Doctor's study.
Dr Senior was a tall, bald man, with small, sharp eyes, and with a
face as solemn as an owl's. He looked up as Stephen entered.
"Come in, my man. Let me see; Greenfield? Oh, yes. You got here on
Tuesday. How old are you?"
"Nearly eleven, sir," said Stephen, with the paper burning in his
pocket.
"Just so; and I dare say your brother has shown you over the school, and
helped to make you feel at home. Now suppose we just run through what
you have learned at home."
Now was the time. With a sigh as deep as the pocket from which he
pulled it, Stephen produced that miserable paper.
"I'm very sorry, sir," he began, "I've not had time--"
"Tut, tut!" said the Doctor; "put that away, and let us get on."
Stephen stared. "It's the paper you gave me!" he said.
The Doctor frowned. "I hope you are not a silly boy," he said, rather
crossly.
"I'm afraid they are all wrong," said Stephen; "the questions were--
were--rather hard."
"What questions?" exclaimed the Doctor, a trifle impatient, and a trifle
puzzled.
"These you sent me," said Stephen, humbly handing in the paper.
"Hum! some mistake; let's see, perhaps Jellicott--ah!" and he put on his
glasses and unfolded the paper.
"Question 1. Grammar!" and then a cloud of amazement fell over the
Doctor's face. He looked sharply out from under his spectacles at
Stephen, who stood anxiously and nervously before him. Then he glanced
again at the paper, and his mouth twitched now and then as he read the
string of questions, and the boy's desperate attempts to answer them.
"Humph!" he said, when the operation was over, "I'm afraid, Greenfield,
you are not a very clever boy--"
"I know I'm not, sir," said Stephen, quite relieved that the Doctor did
not at once order him to quit Saint Dominic's.
"Or you would have seen that this paper was a practical joke." Then it
burst all of a sudden on Stephen. And all this about "Mr Finis", "Oh,
ah," and the rest of it had been a cruel hoax, and no more!
"Come, now, let us waste no more time. I'm not surprised," said the
Doctor, suppressing a smile by a very hard twitch; "I'm not surprised
you found these questions hard. How far have you got in arithmetic?"
And then the Doctor launched Stephen into a _viva voce_ examination, in
which that young prodigy of learning acquitted himself far more
favourably than could have been imagined, and at the end of which he
heard that he would be placed in the fourth junior class, where it would
be his duty to strain every nerve to advance, and make the best use of
his time at Saint Dominic's. Then the Doctor rang his bell.
"Tell Mr Rastle kindly to step here," said he to the porter.
Mr Rastle appeared, and to his charge, after solemnly shaking hands and
promising to be a paragon of industry and good conduct, Stephen was
consigned by the head master.
"By the way," said the Doctor, as Stephen was leaving, "will you tell
the boy who gave you this paper I wish to see him?"
Stephen, who had been too much elated by the result of the real
examination to recollect for the moment the trickery of the sham one,
now blushed very red as he remembered what a goose he had been, and
undertook to obey the Doctor's order. And this it was very easy to do.
For as he opened the study-door he saw Pembury just outside, leaning
against the wall with his eyes on the clock as it struck ten.
As he caught sight of Stephen emerging from the head master's study, his
countenance fell, and he said eagerly and half-anxiously, "Didn't I tell
you ten o'clock, Greenfield?"
"Yes, but the Doctor said half-past nine. And you are a cad to make a
fool of me," added Stephen, rising with indignation, "and--and--and--"
and here he choked.
"Calm yourself, my young friend," said Pembury. "It's such a hard thing
to make a fool of you that, you know, and--and--and--!"
"I shall not speak to you," stammered Stephen.
"Oh, don't apologise," laughed Pembury. "Perhaps it would comfort you
to kick me. Please choose my right leg, as the other is off the ground,
eh?"
"The Doctor wants to speak to you, he says," said Stephen.
Pembury's face fell again. "Do you mean to say he saw the paper, and
you told him?" he said, angrily.
"I showed him the paper, because I thought he had sent it; but I didn't
tell him who gave it to me."
"Then why does he want me?"
"He wants the boy who gave me the paper, that's all he said," answered
Stephen, walking off sulkily to his quarters, and leaving Anthony to
receive the rebukes of Dr Senior, and make his apologies for his evil
deeds as best he could.
The offence after all was not a very terrible one, and Pembury got off
with a mild reprimand on the evils of practical joking, at the end of
which he found himself in his usual amiable frame of mind, and
harbouring no malice against his innocent victim.
"Greenfield," said he, when shortly afterwards he met Oliver, "I owe
your young brother an apology."
"What on earth for?"
"I set him an examination paper to answer, which I'm afraid caused him
some labour. Never mind, it was all for the best."
"What, did that paper he was groaning over come from you? What a shame,
Tony, to take advantage of a little beggar like him!"
"I'm awfully sorry, tell him; but I say, Greenfield, it'll make a
splendid paragraph for the _Dominican_. By the way, are you going to
let me have that poem you promised on the Guinea-pigs?"
"I can't get on with it at all," said Oliver. "I'm stuck for a rhyme in
the second line."
"Oh, stick down anything. How does it begin?"
"`Oh, dwellers in the land of dim perpetual,'"
began Oliver.
"Very good; let's see; how would this do?--
"`I hate the day when first I met you all,
And this I undertake to bet you all,
One day I'll into trouble get you all,
And down the playground steps upset you all,
And with a garden hose I'll wet you all,
And then--'"
"Oh, look here," said Oliver, "that'll do. You may as well finish the
thing right out at that rate."
"Not at all, my dear fellow. It was just a sudden inspiration, you
know. Don't mention it, and you may like to get off that rhyme into
another. But I say, Greenfield, we shall have a stunning paper for the
first one. Tom Senior has written no end of a report of the last
meeting of the Sixth Form Debating Society, quite in the parliamentary
style; and Bullinger is writing a history of Saint Dominic's, `gathered
from the earliest sources,' as he says, in which he's taking off most of
the Sixth. Simon is writing a love-ballad, which is sure to be fun; and
Ricketts is writing a review of Liddell and Scott's _Lexicon_; and
Wraysford is engaged on `The Diary of the Sixth Form Mouse.'"
"Good!" said Oliver, "and what are _you_ writing?"
"Oh, the leading article, you know, and the personal notes, and `Squeaks
from Guineapigland and Tadpoleopolis,' and some of the advertisements.
Come up to my study, you and Wray, this evening after prayers, I say,
and we'll go through it."
And off hobbled the editor of the _Dominican_, leaving Oliver greatly
impressed with his literary talents, especially in the matter of finding
rhymes for "perpetual."
By the time he and Wraysford went in the evening to read over what had
been sent in, the poem on the Guinea-pigs was complete.
They found Pembury busy over a huge sheet of paper, the size of his
table.
"What on earth have you got there?" cried Wraysford.
"The _Dominican_, to be sure," said Anthony, gravely.
"Nonsense! you are not going to get it out in that shape?"
"I am, though. Look here, you fellows," said Anthony, "I'll show you
the dodge of the thing. The different articles will either be copied or
pasted into this big sheet. You see each of these columns is just the
width of a sheet of school paper. Well, here's a margin all round--do
you twig?--so that when the whole thing's made up it'll be ready for
framing."
"Framing!" exclaimed Greenfield and his friend.
"To be sure. I'm getting a big frame, with glass, made for it, with the
title of the paper in big letters painted on the wood. So the way we
shall publish it will be to hang it outside our class-room, and then
every one can come and read it who likes--much better than passing it
round to one fellow at a time."
"Upon my word, Tony, it's a capital notion," exclaimed Wraysford,
clapping the lame boy on the back; "it does you credit, my boy."
"Don't mention it," said Tony; "and don't whack me like that again, or
I'll refuse to insert your `Diary of the Sixth Form Mouse.'"
"But, I say," said Greenfield, "are you sure they'll allow it to hang
out there? It may get knocked about."
"I dare say we may have a row with the monitors about it; but we must
square them somehow. We shall have to keep a fag posted beside it,
though, to protect it."
"And to say `Move on!' like the policemen," added Wraysford. "Well,
it's evident you don't want any help, Tony, so I'll go."
"Good-bye; don't ask me to your study for supper, please."
"I'm awfully sorry, I promised Bullinger. I know he has a dozen
sausages in his cupboard. Come along there. Are you coming,
Greenfield?"
And the worthy friends separated for a season.
Meanwhile, Stephen had made his _debut_ in the Fourth Junior. He was
put to sit at the bottom desk of the class, which happened to be next to
the desk owned by Master Bramble, the inky-headed blanket-snatcher.
This young gentleman, bearing in mind his double humiliation, seemed by
no means gratified to find who his new neighbour was.
"Horrid young blub-baby!" was his affectionate greeting, "I don't want
you next to me."
"I can't help it," said Stephen. "I was put here."
"Oh, yes, because you're such an ignorant young sneak; that's why."
"I suppose that's why you were at the bottom before I came--oh!"
The last exclamation was uttered aloud, being evoked by a dig from the
amiable Master Bramble's inky pen into Stephen's leg.
"Who was that?" said Mr Rastle, looking up from his desk.
"Now then," whispered Bramble, "sneak away--tell tales, and get me into
a row--I'll pay you!"
Stephen, feeling himself called upon, stood up.
"It was me," he said.
"It was I, would be better grammar," said Mr Rastle, quietly.
Mr Rastle was a ruddy young man, with a very good-humoured face, and a
sly smile constantly playing at the corners of his mouth. He no doubt
guessed the cause of the disturbance, for he asked, "Was any one
pinching you?"
"Go it," growled Bramble, in a savage whisper. "Say it was me, you
sneak."
Stephen said, No, no one had pinched him; but finished up his sentence
with another "Oh!" as the gentle Bramble gave him a sharp side-kick on
the ankle as he stood.
Mr Rastle's face darkened as he perceived this last piece of by-play.
"Bramble," said he, "oblige me by standing on the form for half an hour.
I should be sorry to think you were as objectionable as your name
implies. Sit down, Greenfield."
And then the class resumed, with Master Bramble perched like a statue of
the sulky deity on his form, muttering threats against Greenfield all
the while, and the most scathing denunciations against all who might be
even remotely connected with big brothers, and mammies, and blub-babies.
Stephen, who was beginning to feel himself much more at home at Saint
Dominic's, betrayed no visible terror at these menaces, and only once
took any notice of his exalted enemy, when the latter attempted not only
to stand on the form, but upon a tail of Stephen's jacket, and a bit of
the flesh of his leg at the same time. Then he gave the offending foot
a knock with his fist and an admonitory push.
"Please, sir," squeaked the lordly Bramble, "Greenfield junior is trying
to knock me over."
"I was not," shouted Stephen; "he was squashing me with his foot, and I
moved it away."
"Really, Bramble," said Mr Rastle, "you are either very unfortunate or
very badly behaved. Come and stand on this empty form beside my desk.
There will be no danger here of `squashing' any one's leg or of being
knocked over. Come at once."
So Mr Bramble took no advantage by his last motion, and served the rest
of his term of penal servitude, in the face of the entire class, under
the immediate eye of Mr Rastle.
Directly class was over, Stephen had to go and wait upon Loman for a
particular purpose, which the reader must hear of in due time.