He said, "What you say about poetry is awfully interesting to me,
Tomkins, because I had thought the same. And I know many rhymes of a
queer sort, and I can make rhymes rather well myself, and I had an idea
I would try and do the whole of my composition in rhyme."
"Like your cheek," said Tomkins. "My dear kid, it will take you all
your time to write prose. And what do you know about flowers, anyway?"
"I do know something," said Smythe, "owing to my father, who collects
odd rhymes and things. It's called folklore. It includes queer names of
plants and animals; also about remedies for warts, and the charms for
curing animals from witches, and overlooking, and suchlike. I know some
awful funny things, anyway, that my governor has told me, though they
may not be true."
Tomkins was a good deal interested in this.
"Fancy a kid like you knowing anything at all about it!" he said.
There was only Walters left, but he was no good at all, and he'd simply
gone in for it because his people insisted upon his doing so. I asked
Walters if he knew much about wild flowers, and he answered something
about cucumber sandwiches, which he had once eaten in large quantities
owing to being forgotten at a lawn-tennis party. He seemed to think
because a cucumber was a vegetable, and a flower was a vegetable, that a
cucumber was a flower. He said that was all he knew about the subject,
excepting that dogs ate grass when not feeling well. So I told Tomkins
he needn't bother about Walters.
Tomkins, however, assured us that he wasn't bothering about any of them.
He said that facts were the things, and not theories. So while
Macmullen swatted away at his botany, and Smythe collected rhymes and
offered anybody three links of a brass chain for a word that rhymed with
toad-flax, and Walters merely waited for the day, and made no effort as
far as we could see, Tomkins poked about, and went one evening out of
bounds, with Freckles and young Corkey, into the famous quarry at
Merivale Great Wood. They were chased, but escaped owing to the
strategy of Freckles; and Tomkins felt the 'Bolsover' prize was now an
absolute cert for him, because in the preserves he had met with an
exceedingly rare flower--at least, he said so; and he believed that by
mentioning it, and making a sketch of it in his paper, he would easily
distance Macmullen, who did not so much as know there was such a flower.
As far as ages went, I must tell you that Tomkins was thirteen and two
weeks, and Macmullen thirteen and seven months, while Smythe was ten and
Walters merely nine and a half.
All four put on a little side about it the Sunday before, and a good
many other fellows wished they had gone in, because the papers had to be
written in the Doctor's own study, and there are some magnificent
pictures and marble statues in that room such as are very seldom seen by
the lower school.
I asked each one after breakfast on the appointed day how he felt; and
Tomkins said, "Hopeful"; and Macmullen said, "Much as usual"; and Smythe
said, "Sleepy, because I've been awake nearly all night remembering
rhymes I've heard my father say"; and Walters said he had a sort of
rather horrid wish that _his_ father had died the term before, because
he didn't think his mother would ever have made him go in for a thing he
hated so much as this.
*III*
Two hours were allowed for the essay, and by good luck I happened to
meet the four chaps just as they came out. So I got their ideas fresh
on what they'd done. Curiously enough, all four were hopeful. Tomkins,
of course, I knew would be, and probably also Macmullen, but Smythe and
even Walters seemed to fancy they had a chance too. This astonished me
a good deal. So I said to Smythe--
"How the dickens d'you think any stuff you can have done would be near
to what my cousin Tomkins has done?"