THE GOOD CONDUCT PRIZE.
It was three years after. Sometimes three years makes a considerable
change in grown-ups. More often it leaves them pretty much where they
were. But with boys and girls the world begins all over again every
two years at most. So the terms went and came, and at each vacation,
instead of returning home, Hugh John went to London. For it so
happened that the year he had left for school the house of Windy
Standard was burned down almost to the ground, and Mr. Picton Smith
took advantage of the fact to build an entirely new mansion on a
somewhat higher site.
The first house might have been saved had the Bounding Brothers been
in the neighbourhood, or indeed any active and efficient helpers. But
the nearest engine was under the care of the Edam fire brigade, who
upon hearing of the conflagration, with great enthusiasm ran their
engine a quarter of a mile out of the town by hand. Then their ardour
suddenly giving out, they sat down and had an amicable smoke on the
roadside till the horse was brought to drag the apparatus the rest of
the distance.
But alas! the animal was too fat to be got between the shafts, so it
had to be sent back and a leaner horse forwarded. Meantime the house
of Windy Standard was blazing merrily, and when the Edam fire company
finally arrived, the ashes were still quite hot.
* * * * *
So in this way it came about that it was three long years before Hugh
John again saw the hoary battlements of the ancient strength on the
castle island which he and his army had attacked so boldly. There were
great changes in the town itself. The railway had come to Edam, and
now steamed and snorted under the very walls of the Abbey. Chimneys
had multiplied, and the smoke columns were taller and denser. The
rubicund Provost had gone the way of all the earth, even of all
provosts! And the leading bailie, one Donnan, a butcher and army
contractor, sat with something less of dignity but equal efficiency in
his magisterial chair.
Hugh John from the station platform saw something of this with a sick
heart, but he was sure that out in the pure air and infinite quiet of
Windy Standard he would find all things the same. But a new and finer
house shone white upon the hill. Gardens flourished on unexpected
places with that appearance of having been recently planted,
frequently pulled up by the roots, looked at and put back, which
distinguishes all new gardens. Here and there white-painted vineries
and conservatories winked ostentatiously in the sun.
What a time Hugh John had been planning they would have! For months he
had thought of nothing but this. Toady Lion and he would do all over
again those famous deeds of daring he had done at the castle. Again
they would attack the island. Other secret passages would be
discovered. All would be as it had been--only nicer. And Cissy
Carter--more than everything else he had looked forward to meeting
Cissy. Prissy had seen her often, and even during the last week she
had written to Hugh John (Prissy always did like to write letters)
that Cissy Carter was just splendid--so much older and _so_ improved.
Cissy was now nearly seventeen, being (as before) a year and three
months older than Hugh John.
Now the distinguished military hero had not been much troubled with
sentiment during his school terms. Soldiers at the front never are. He
was fully occupied in doing his lessons fairly. He got on well with
"the fellows." He was anxious to keep up his end in the games. But,
for all that, during these years he had sacredly kept the half of the
crooked sixpence in his box, hidden in the end of a tie which he never
wore. Now, however, he had looked it out, and by dint of hammering
his imagination, he had managed to squeeze out an amount of feeling
which quite astonished himself.
He would be noble, generous, forbearing. He remembered how faithfully
Cissy had loved him, and how unresponsive he had been in the past. He
resolved that all would be very different now.
It was.
Then again he had brought back a record of some distinction from St.
Salvator's. He had won the school golf championship. He possessed also
a fine bat with an inscription on silver, telling how in the match
with St. Aiden's, a rival college of much pretension, he had made 100
not out, and taken eight wickets for sixty-nine.
Besides this presentation cricket bat Hugh John had brought home only
one other prize. This was a fitted dressing-bag of beautiful design,
with a whole armoury of wonderful silver-plated things inside. It was
known as the Good Conduct Prize, and was awarded every year, not by
the masters, but by the free votes of all the boys. Prissy was
enormously proud of this tribute paid to her brother by his
companions. The donor was an old gentleman whose favourite hobby was
the promotion of the finer manners of the ancient days, and the terms
of the remit on which the award must be made were, that it should be
given to the boy who, in the opinion of his fellow-students, was most
distinguished for consistent good manners and polite breeding, shown
both by his conduct to his superiors in school, and in association
with his equals in the playing fields.
At first Hugh John had taken no interest whatever in this award,
perhaps from a feeling that his own claims were somewhat slender--or
thinking that the prize would merely be some "old book or other." But
it happened that, in order to stimulate the school during the last lax
and sluggish days of the summer term, the head-master took out the
fittings of the dressing-bag, and set the stand containing them on his
desk in view of all.
There was a set of razors among them.
Instantly Hugh John's heart yearned with a mighty desire to obtain
that prize. How splendid it would be if he could appear at home before
Toady Lion and Cissy Carter with a moustache!
That night he considered the matter from all points of view--and felt
his muscles. In the morning he was down bright and early. He prowled
about the purlieus of the playground. At the back of the gymnasium he
met Ashwell Major.
"I say, Ashwell Major," he said, "about that Good Conduct Prize--who
are you going to vote for?"
"Well," replied Ashwell Major, "I haven't thought much--I suppose
Sammy Carter."
"Oh, humbug!" cried our hero; "see here, Sammy will get tons of prizes
anyway. What does he want with that one too?"
"Well," said the other, "let's give it to little Brown. Butter
wouldn't melt in his mouth. He's such a cake."
Hugh John felt that the time for moral suasion had come.
"Smell that!" he said, suddenly extending the clenched fist with which
a week before he had made "bran mash" of the bully of the school.
[Illustration: "SMELL THAT!"]
Reluctantly Ashwell Major's nostrils inhaled the bouquet of Hugh
John's knuckles. Ashwell Major seemed to have a dainty and
discriminating taste in perfumes, for he did not appear to relish this
one.
Then Ashwell Major said that now he was going to vote solidly for
Hugh John Smith. He had come to the conclusion that his manners were
quite exceptional.
And so as the day went on, did the candidate for the fitted
dressing-bag argue with the other boarders, waylaying them one by one
as they came out into the playground. The day-boys followed, and each
enjoyed the privilege of a smell at the fist of power.
* * * * *
"I rejoice to announce that the Good Conduct Prize has been awarded by
the unanimous vote of all the scholars of Saint Salvator's to Hugh
John Picton Smith of the fifth form. I am the more pleased with this
result, that I have never before known such complete and remarkable
unanimity of choice in the long and distinguished history of this
institution."
These were the memorable words of the headmaster on the great day of
the prize-giving. Whereupon our hero, going up to receive his
well-earned distinction, blushed modestly and becomingly; and was
gazed upon with wrapt wonder by the matrons and maids assembled, as
beyond controversy the model boy of the school. And such a burst of
cheering followed him to his seat as had never been heard within the
walls of St. Salvator's. For quite casually Hugh John had mentioned
that he would be on the look-out for any fellow that was a sneak and
didn't cheer like blazes.
* * * * *
MORAL.--_There is no moral to this chapter._