There’s more stuff torked about fagging at school than anything else in
the world, as far as I can see; and being the smalest boy but two at
Dunston’s, and a fag myself, I ought to know. Of corse, fags do get it
pretty hot sometimes if they happen to fag for a beast, but big fellows
aren’t beasts to small ones as a general thing. I’m sure Bradwell was
the best chap that ever came to Dunston’s, and when he was expelled over
the seege in the Wing Dormatery--him and Trelawny--I felt frightful. I’m
Watson minor myself, my brother being Watson major, one of the reserves
for the second eleven and captain of the third.
The thing I’m going to write out happened just before the seege, and was
all over before that; and it shows what a fag can do. It also shows what
a jolly good thing it is for big fellows to treat fags well, and give
them odds and ends so as to get their affecksun. If I hadn’t felt what I
did to Bradwell, I shouldn’t have run the awful risks I did for him.
What I did certinly ruined a great project of Bradwell’s, and upsett him
a good bit at the time. But he said afterwards, when the blow had
fallen, and when he could look back and think of it without smacking my
head, that I had ment well. I remember his very words, for that matter.
He said, “Your intenshuns were all right--I will say that--but you’ve
ruined my life.” No chap could say farer than that; and, mind you, I did
ruin his life in a way. I’ve heard many fellows say Bradwell was a
bounder by birth; but he never was to me.
Well, Bradwell had a great admeration for Mabel Dunston, the Doctor’s
youngest daughter but one, and she had an equal great admeration for
him, for two terms. Bradwell, although a great sportsman in other ways,
was fond of girls. If he passed a school of them he would look awfully
rum and reddish in the face an’ watery in the eyes. Once, going with him
to the playing-field for a football match, he made the distance half a
mile longer by going up a side-street to avoid the high-school girls;
and I asked him why, and he said it was cheek, but told me all the same.
He said, “You can’t meet women got up like this.” Bradwell has
frightfully thin calves to his legs when seen in “knickers,” though he
is the best goalkeeper that was ever known at Dunston’s. Of course, his
affair with Mabel Dunston would never have got to be known by me but for
my great use to Bradwell in carrying notes. Being in the Doctor’s house
that term I was easily able to do this, and there was a jar of green
stuff in the hall where she told me to leave the notes, which I did. She
was fifteen, I believe, or else sixteen, but well on in years anyway,
and a few months older than Bradwell. It was his general brillance won
her, for he could do anything, and his father had plenty of money, being
a man like Whitely’s in London, only in the North of England. Bradwell
drew almost as well as pictures in books, and he used to illustrate the
Latin grammar for his special chums. There’s a part of the Latin grammar
called Syntax, which I haven’t come to yet myself, but it has rather
rummy things in it, with both the Latin and English of them. And
Bradwell used to illustrate these things; and he illustrated two in my
grammar out of puer kindness to me. One was, “Balbus is crowning the
boy’s head with a garland”; and the other was, “A snake appeared to
Sulla while sacrifising”; and you never saw anything better. They were
done on the margin in ink, and the snake appearing to Sulla was about
the queerest and best thing even seen in a Latin grammar.