"Do you call that a bit? Give us a real bit."
There are plenty of boys who will defend their toffee with their lives.
Such boys he liked to meet, for their refusal to surrender a part gave
him an opportunity to fight and a reason for confiscating the whole of
the ravished sweetmeat. One often had to devour one's sweets at a full
gallop. It was no uncommon thing to see a small boy scudding furiously
around a field with Bull pounding behind, intent as a bloodhound, and
as horribly vocal. A close examination would discover that the small
boy's jaws were moving with even greater rapidity than his legs. If he
managed to get his stuff devoured before he was caught it was all
right, but he got hammered anyhow when he was caught. However, Bull's
approach was usually managed with great skill and strategy, and before
the small boy was aware Bull was squatting beside him using
blandishments both moral and minatory.
He was a very gifted boy. He had no bent for learning lessons but he
had a great gift for collecting and turning to his own use the property
of other people. Sometimes three or four boys swore a Solemn League
and Covenant against him. His perplexity then was extreme. He saw
toffee being devoured and none of it coming his way. Possibly his
method of thinking was in pictures, and he could visualise with painful
clarity the alien gullets down which toffee was traveling, and,
simultaneously, he could see the woeful emptiness of his own red lane.
He must have felt that all was not right with a Providence which could
allow such happenings. A world wherein there was toffee for others and
none for him was certainly a world out of joint. His idea of Utopia
would be a place where there were lots of things for him to eat and a
circle of hungry boys who watched his deliberate jaws with envy and
humility. Furthermore, the idea that smaller boys could have, not the
courage, but the heart to congregate against him, must have come to him
with a shock. He was appalled by a sense of the sinfulness of human
nature, and dismayed by the odds against which virtue has to fight.
The others, strong in numbers, followed him on such occasions chewing
their tuck with grave deliberation, descanting minutely and loudly on
the taste of each bit, the splendid length of time it took to dissolve,
and the blessedly large quantity which yet remained to be eaten. He
threatened them, but his threats were received with yawns. He wheedled
(a thing he could do consummately well) but they were not to be
blandished. He mapped out on his own person the particular and painful
places where later on he would hit them unless he was bound over to the
peace by toffee. And they sucked their sweetstuff and made diagrams on
each other of the places where they could hit Bull if they had a mind
to, and told each other and him that he was not worth hitting and,
would probably die if he were hit. But they were careful not dissolve
partnership until the sweets were eaten and beyond even the wildest
hopes of salvage. Then, in the later-on that had been predicted, Bull
captured them in detail, and, as he had promised, he "lammed the
stuffing" out of them.
He had all the grave wisdom of the stupid, and the extraordinary energy
and persistence which perpetuates them. He never could learn a lesson,
but he could, and did, pinch the boy next to him into adept prompting,
and would intimidate any one into doing his sums. Indeed, the man of
whom he was the promise had no need for ordinary learning. The lighter
accomplishments of life had no appeal, nor would the deeper lessons
have any meaning for him. He is simply a big, physical appetite,
untrammelled by anything like introspection or conscience, and working
in perfect innocence for the fulfilment of its simple wants. For at
base his species are surely the most simple of human creatures. In
spite of their complex physical structure they are one-celled organisms
driven through life with only a passionate hunger as their motive
power, and with no complexities of thought or emotion to hamper their
loud progressions. None but those of their own kind can suffer from
their ravages, and, even so, they fly the contact of each other with
horror.
Doubtless by this time Bull is a prosperous and wealthy citizen
somewhere, the proprietor of a curved waistcoat and a gold watch.
Possessions other than these he would regard with the amiable tolerance
of a philosopher regarding a child with toys. So strongly acquisitive
a nature must win the particular little battles which it is fitted to
wage. When a conscienceless mind is buttressed by a pugnacious
temperament then houses and land, and cattle and maidservants, and
such-like, the small change of existence, are easily gotten.