ELEGIACS
Jan was prepared never to hear the last of his outrageous conduct in the
big schoolroom; that was all he knew about his kind. It cost him one of
the efforts of his school life to show his face again in Heriot’s quad;
and the quad was full of fellows, as he knew it would be; but only one
accosted him, and that was Sprawson, whose open hand flew up in a
terrifying manner, to fall in a hearty slap on Jan’s back. “Well done,
Tiger!” says Sprawson before half the house. “That’s the biggest score
off Abinger there’s been since old Bewicke’s time.” And Jan rushed up to
his study with a fresh lump in his throat, though he had come in vowing
that the whole house together should not make him blub.
That night at tea Jane Eyre of all people (who was splendidly supplied
with all sorts of eatables from home) pushed a glorious game pie across
the table to Jan; and altogether there was for a few hours rather more
sympathy in the air than was good for one who after all had made public
display of a thoroughly unworthy propensity. It is true that Jan had
gone short of sympathy all his life, and that a wave of even misplaced
sympathy may be beneficial to a nature suffering from this particular
privation. But a clever gentleman was waiting to counteract all that,
and to undo at his leisure what Mr. Thrale had done in about two
minutes.
No sooner had the form re-assembled in his hall next day than Haigh made
them a set sarcastic speech on the subject of Jan’s enormity. He might
have seen at a glance that even outwardly the boy was already chastened;
that his jacket and his hair were better brushed than they had been all
the term, his boots properly laced, his tie neatly tied; that in a word
there were more signs of self-respect. Haigh, however, preferred to look
at his favourites at the top of the form, and merely to jerk the thumb
of contempt towards his aversion at the bottom. He reminded them of his
prophecy that Rutter would disgrace them all before the school, and the
triumph of the true prophet seemed at least as great as his indignation
at what had actually happened. Even he, however, had not foreseen the
quality of the disgrace, or anticipated a fit of sulks in public. Yet
for his own part he was not sorry that the headmaster, and Mr. Heriot
and all the other masters and boys in the school, should have had an
opportunity of seeing for themselves what they in that room had to put
up with almost every day of the term. And the harangue concluded with a
plain hint to the form to take the law into its own hands, and “knock
the nonsense out of that sulky bumpkin, who has made us the
laughing-stock of the place.”
To all of which Jan listened without a trace of his old resentment, and
then stood up in his place.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” said he. “I apologise to you and the form.”
Haigh looked unable to believe his eyes and ears. But he was not the man
to revise judgment of a boy once labelled Poison in his mind. He could
no longer fail to note the sudden improvement in Jan’s looks and manner;
all he could do was to put the worst construction upon it that occurred
to him at the moment.
“I shall entertain your apology when you look less pleased with
yourself,” he sneered. “Sit down.”
But Jan’s good resolutions were not to be eradicated any more easily
than the rooted hostility of Haigh, who certainly surpassed himself in
his treatment of the boy’s persistent efforts at amendment. Jan, though
no scholar, and never likely to make one now, could be sharp enough in a
general way when he chose. But he never had chosen under Mr. Haigh. It
was no use attending to a brute who “hotted” you just the same whether
you attended or not. And yet that little old man in the Upper Sixth
class-room, with a single stern analogy, had made it somehow seem some
use to do one’s best without sulking, even without looking for fair
play, let alone reward. And, feeling a regular new broom at heart, Jan
was still determined to sweep clean in spite of Haigh.
It chanced to be a Virgil morning, and of course the new broom began by
saying his “rep” as he had never said it before. Perhaps he deserved
what he got for that.
“I thought you were one of those boys, Rutter,” said Haigh, “who affect
a constitutional difficulty in learning repetition? I only wish I’d sent
you up to Mr. Thrale six weeks ago!”
Yet Jan maintained his interest throughout the fresh passage which the
form proceeded to construe, and being put on duly in the hardest place,
got through again without discredit. It was easy, however, for a member
of the Middle Remove to take an interest in his Virgil, for that poet
can have had few more enthusiastic interpreters than Mr. Haigh, who
indeed might have been the best master in the school if he had been less
of a bullying boy himself. His method in a Virgil hour, at any rate, was
beyond reproach. If his form knew the lesson, there was no embroidery of
picturesque detail or of curious information which it was too much
trouble for him to tack on for their benefit. The _Æneid_ they were
doing was the one about the boat-race; and what Mr. Haigh (who had
adorned both flood and field at Cambridge) did not know about aquatics
ancient and modern was obviously not worth knowing. He could handle a
trireme on the blackboard as though he had rowed in one in the Mays, and
accompany the proceeding with a running report worthy of a sporting
journalist. But let there be one skeleton at the feast of reason, one
Jan who could not or would not understand, and the whole hour might go
in an unseemly duel between intemperate intellect and stubborn
imbecility. Otherwise a gloating and sonorous Haigh would wind up the
morning with Conington’s translation of the lesson; and this was one of
those gratifying occasions; in fact, Jan was attending as he had never
before attended, when one couplet caught his fancy to the exclusion of
all that followed.
“These bring success their zeal to fan;
They can because they think they can.”
“Perhaps _I_ can,” said Jan to himself, “if I think I can. I _will_
think I can, and then we’ll see.”
Haigh had shut the book and was putting a question to the favoured few
at the top of the form. “Conington has one fine phrase here,” he said.
“I wonder if any of you noticed it? _Possunt quia posse videntur_; did
you notice how he renders that?”
The favoured few had not noticed. They looked seriously concerned about
it. The body of the form took its discomfiture more philosophically,
having less to lose. No one seemed to connect the phrase with its
English equivalent, and Mr. Haigh was manifestly displeased. “_Possunt
quia posse videntur!_” he repeated ironically as he reached the dregs;
and at the very last moment Jan’s fingers flew out with a Sunday-school
snap.
“Well?” said Haigh on the last note of irony.
“'They can because they think they can’!” cried Jan, and went from the
bottom to the top of the form at one flight, amid a volley of venomous
glances, but with one broad grin from Carpenter.
“I certainly do wish I’d sent you up six weeks ago!” said Haigh. “I
shall be having a decent copy of verses from you next!”
Yet Jan, though quick as a stone to sink back into the mud, made a
gallant effort even at his verses; but that was his last. They were much
better than any attempt of his hitherto; but it was clear to everybody
that Haigh did not believe they were Jan’s own. Rutter was asked who had
helped him. Rutter replied that he had done his verses himself without
help. No help whatever? No help whatever. Haigh laughed to himself, but
said nothing. Jan said something to himself, but did not laugh. And now
at last he might never have been through those two minutes in the Upper
Sixth class-room.
November was a month of the past; another week would finish off the
term’s work, leaving ten clear and strenuous days for the Exams. Haigh
could only set one more copy of Latin verses, and Carpenter was as sorry
on his own account as he was thankful for Jan’s sake. Carpenter had
acquired an undeniable knack of making hexameters and pentameters that
continually construed and invariably scanned; it was the one thing he
could do better than anybody in the form, and it had brought him
latterly into considerable favour with a master whose ardour for the
Muse betrayed a catholicity of intellect in signal contrast to his view
of boys. It was not only the Greeks and Latins whose august measures
appealed to Haigh; never a copy of elegiacs set he, but it was a gem
already in its native English, and his voice must throb with its music
even as he dictated it to his form. All this was another slight mistake
in judgment: the man made a personal grievance of atrocities inevitably
committed upon his favourite poets, and the boys conceived a not
unreasonable prejudice against some of the noblest lyrics in the
language. Carpenter was probably the only member of the form who not
only revelled in the original lines, but rather enjoyed hunting up the
Latin words, and found a positive satisfaction in fitting them into
their proper places as dactyls and spondees.
“That’s the finest thing he’s set us yet,” said Chips, when Haigh had
given them Cory’s “Heraclitus” for the last copy of the term.
“It’ll be plucky fine when I’ve done with it,” Jan rejoined grimly.
“I should start on it early, if I were you,” said Chips, “like you did
last week.”
“And then get told you’ve had ’em done for you? Thanks awfully; you
don’t catch me at that game again. Between tea and prayers on Saturday
night’s good enough for me—if I’m not too done after the paper-chase.”
“You’re not going to the paper-chase, Tiger?”
“I am if I’m not stopped.”
“When you’re not even allowed to play football?”
“That’s exactly why.”
The paper-chase always took place on the last Saturday but one, and was
quite one of the events of the winter term. All the morning, after
second school, fags had been employed in tearing up scent in the
library; and soon after dinner the road under Heriot’s study windows
began to resound with the tramp of boys on their way in twos and threes
to see the start from Burston Beeches. A spell of hard weather had
broken in sunshine and clear skies; the afternoon was brilliantly fine;
and by half-past two the scene in the paddock under the noble beeches,
with the grey tower of Burston church rising behind the leafless
branches, was worthy of the day. Practically all the school was there,
and quite a quarter of it in flannels and jerseys red or white, trimmed
or starred with the colour of some fifteen. Off go the two
hares—gigantic gentlemen with their football colours thick upon them.
Hounds and mere boys in plain clothes crowd to the gate to see the last
of them and their bulging bags of scent. The twelve minutes’ law allowed
them seems much more like half-an-hour; but at last time is up, the
gates are opened, and the motley pack pours through with plenty of plain
clothes after them for the first few fields. In about a mile comes the
first check; it is the first of many, for snow is still lying under the
trees and hedges, and in the distance it always looks like a handful of
waste-paper. The younger hounds take a minute off, leaving their betters
to pick up the scent again, and their laboured breath is so like tobacco
smoke that you fancy that young master in knickerbockers is there to see
that it is not. Off again to the first water-jump—which everybody
fords—and so over miles of open upland, flecked with scent and
snow—through hedges into ditches—a pack of mudlarks now, and but a
remnant of the pack that started. Now the scent takes great zigzags, and
lies in niggardly handfuls that tell their tale. Now it is thick again,
and here are the two fags who met the hares with the fresh bags, and
those gigantic gentlemen are actually only five minutes ahead, for here
is the high road back past the Upper, and if it wasn’t for the red sun
in your eyes there should be a view of them from the top of one of those
hills.
On the top of the last hill, by the white palings of the Upper Ground,
there is a group of boys and masters, and several of the masters’ wives
as well, to see the finish; and it is going to be one of the best
finishes they ever have seen. Here come the gigantic gentlemen, red as
Indians with the sun upon their faces, and one of them plunging headlong
in a plain distress. They rush down that hill, and are half-way up this
one, the wet mud shining all over them like copper, when the first
handful of hounds start up against the sky behind them.
“Surely that’s rather a small boy to be in the first dozen,” says Miss
Heriot, pointing out a puppy in an untrimmed jersey, who is running
gamely by himself between the first and second batches of hounds.
“In no fifteen, either,” says Heriot, noticing the jersey rather than
the boy, who is still a slip of muddy white on the opposite hill.
The hares are already home. They have been received with somewhat
perfunctory applause, the real excitement being reserved for the race
between the leading hounds, now in a cluster at the foot of the last
hill; but half-way up the race is over, and Sprawson is increasing his
lead with every stride.
“Well run, my house!” says Heriot, with laconic satisfaction.
“The house isn’t done with yet, sir,” pants Sprawson, turning his back
to the sun. “There’s young Rutter been running like an old hound all the
way; here he is, in the first ten!”
And there indeed was the rather small boy in the plain jersey whom
neither Heriot nor his sister had recognised as Jan; but then he looked
another being in his muddy flannels; slimmer and trimmer, and somehow
more in his element than in the coat and collar of workaday life; and
the flush upon his face is not merely the result of exercise and a
scarlet sky, it is a flush of perfect health and momentary happiness as
well.
In fact it has been the one afternoon of all the term which Jan may care
to recall in later life; and how it will stand out among the weary walks
with poor Carpenter and the hours of bitterness under Haigh! But the
afternoon is not over yet. Sprawson is first back at the house; his
good-natured tongue has been wagging before Jan gets there, and Jan
hears a pleasant thing or two as he jogs through the quad to change in
the lavatory. But why has he not been playing football all these weeks?
It might have made just the difference to the Under-Sixteen team; they
might have beaten Haigh’s in the second round, instead of just losing as
they had done to his mortification before Jan’s eyes. What did he mean
by pretending to have a heart, and then running like this? It must be
jolly well inquired into.
“Then you’d better inquire of old Hill,” says Jan, naming the doctor as
disrespectfully as he dares to the captain of the house. “It was he said
I had one, Loder, not me!”
And Loder looks as if he would like to smack Jan’s head again, but is
restrained by the presence of Sprawson and Cave _major_, both of whom
have more influence in the house than he. The great Charles Cave has not
been in the paper-chase; he will win the Hundred and the Hurdles next
term, but he is too slender a young Apollo to shine across country, and
is not the man to go in for the few things at which he happens not to
excel. He does not address Jan personally, but deigns to mention him in
a remark to Sprawson.
“Useful man for us next term, Mother,” says Cave, “if he’s under
fifteen.”
“When’s your birthday, Tiger?” splutters Sprawson from the showerbath.
“End of this month,” says Jan.
“Confound your eyes!” cries Mother Sprawson, “then you won’t be under
fifteen for the sports, and I’ll give you a jolly good licking!”
But what Sprawson really does give Jan is cocoa and biscuits at Maltby’s
in the market-place: a most unconventional attention from a man of his
standing to a new boy: who knows enough by this time to feel painfully
out of place in the fashionable shop, and devoutly to wish himself with
Carpenter at one of their humble haunts. But even this incident is a
memory to treasure, and not to be spoilt by the fact that Shockley
waylays and kicks him in the quad for “putting on a roll,” and that
Heriot himself has Jan into his study after lock-up, for the first time
since the term began, and first gives him a severe wigging for having
run in the paper-chase at all, but sends him off with a parting
compliment on having run so well.
“He said he’d only been forbidden to play football,” so Bob Heriot
reported to his sister. “Of course I had to jump on him for that; but I
own I’m thankful I didn’t find out in time to stop his little game. It’s
just what was wanted to lift him an inch out of the ruck. It augurs the
sportsman I believe he’ll turn out in spite of us.”
“But what about his heart?”
“He hasn’t a heart, never had one, and after this can never be accused
of such a thing again.”
“I wonder you didn’t go to Dr. Hill about it long ago, Bob.”
“I did go to him. But Hill said he wouldn’t take the responsibility of
letting the unfortunate boy play football without inquiring into his
past history. That was the last proceeding to encourage, and so my hands
are tied. They always are where poor Rutter is concerned. It was the
same thing with Haigh over his Latin verses. He wanted me to write to
the boy’s preparatory schoolmaster! I haven’t interceded with him since.
Rutter’s the one boy in my house I can’t stick up for. He must sink or
swim for himself, and I think he’s going to swim; if he were in any
other form I should be sure. But I simply daren’t hold out the helping
hand that one would to others.”
Miss Heriot gave an understanding nod.
“I’ve often heard you say you can’t treat two boys alike. Now I see what
you mean.”
“But I can’t treat Rutter as I ever treated any boy before. I’ve got to
keep my treatment to myself. I mustn’t make him conscious, if I know it;
that applies to them all, of course, but it would make this boy
suspicious in a minute. He puts me on my mettle, I can tell you! I’m not
sure that he isn’t putting the whole public-school system on its trial!”
“That one boy, Bob?”
“They all do, of course. They’re all our judges in the end. But this one
is such a nut to crack, and yet there’s such a kernel somewhere! I stake
my place on that. The boy has more character even than I thought.”
“Although he sulks?”
“That’s often a sign. It means at the least courage of one’s mood. But
what you and I know, and have not got to forget, is that his whole point
of view is probably different from that of any fellow who ever went
through the school.”
“As a straw plucked from the stables?” laughed Miss Heriot under her
breath.
“Hush, Milly, for heaven’s sake! No. I was thinking of the absolute
adventure the whole thing must be to him, and has been from the very
first morning when he got up early to look about for himself like a
castaway exploring the coast!”
“Well, I only hope he’s found the natives reasonably friendly!”
The sudden friendliness of the natives was of course Jan’s greatest joy,
as for once he revelled in the peace and quiet of the untidiest study in
the house. He was more tired than he had ever been in his life before,
but also happier than he had ever dreamt of being this term. The
hot-water pipes threw a modicum of grateful warmth upon his aching legs,
outstretched on the leg-rest of the folding-chair. The curtains were
closely drawn, the candles burning at his elbow. On his knees lay a
_Gradus ad Parnassum_, open, upon an open English-Latin; and propped
against the candle-sticks was the exercise book in which he had taken
down the beautiful English version of “Heraclitus.” It is to be feared
that the beauty was lost upon Jan, who was much too weary to make a very
resolute attack upon a position which he was not equipped to capture, or
to lead another forlorn hope in which the least degree of success would
be deemed a suspicious circumstance. But he did make certain idle
demonstrations with a pencil upon a bit of foolscap. And ten minutes
before prayers he pulled himself sufficiently together to write his
eight lines out in ink.
“Let’s have a look,” said Carpenter, as they waited for the Heriots in
hall; and a look was quite enough. “I say, Tiger, you can’t show this
up! You’ll be licked as sure as eggs are eggs,” whispered Chips.
“I don’t care.”
“You would care. You simply shan’t get this signed to-night. I’ll touch
it up after prayers, and let you have it in time to make a clean copy
before ten, and Heriot’ll sign it after prayers in the morning.”
And he put that copy in his pocket as the sentinel in the passage flew
in with his sepulchral “Hush!”
By gulping down his milk and taking his dog-rock with him to his study,
Carpenter was able to devote a good half-hour to Jan’s verses and still
give Jan ten minutes to copy out the revised version; the ten minutes
was ample, but the half-hour was all too short. The very first line
began with a false quantity, and ended with a grammatical blunder.
Carpenter rectified the false quantity by a simple transposition, and
made so bold as to substitute _perisse_ for _moriri_ at the end of the
hexameter. The second half of the pentameter was hopeless: Chips fell
back on his own, merely changing _causa doloris_ to _fletus acerbus_,
and plumed himself on his facility. But in the second couplet every
other foot was a flogging matter if Jan got sent up.
“I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.”
Chips loved the lines well enough to blush for his own respectable
attempt at a Latin rendering; but his blood ran cold at Jan’s—
“Flevi quum memini nostro quam sæpe loquendo
Defessum Phœbum fecimus ire domum.”
He flung himself on the monstrosity, but had to leave it at—
“Cum lacrymis memini nostro quam sæpe loquendo
Hesperias Phœbus fessus adisset aquas.”
Chips did not plume himself on this; but at any rate _nostro loquendo_
was Jan’s own gem, and just bad enough to distract attention from the
suspicious superiority of the rest without invoking the direst
consequences. This was a subtle calculation on the part of Carpenter. He
was quite conscious of the subtlety, and by no means as ashamed of it as
such a desperately honest person should have been. He justified the
means by the end, which was to save Jan a certain flogging; and the
stage after justification was something very like a guilty relish in a
first offence. There was an artistic satisfaction in doing the thing as
deftly as Chips was doing it. The third couplet might almost have passed
muster as Jan had left it; a touch or two and it was safe. But the last
hexameter would never do, and Chips replaced it with a plagiarism of his
own corresponding line which might have sufficed if he himself had not
come curiously to grief over the last hexameter.
“Excellent, as usual, Carpenter,” said Haigh in the fulness of time. “I
could have given you full marks but for an odd mistake of yours towards
the end. You seem to have misread the original penultimate line: 'Still
are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;’ what part of speech
do you take that 'still’ to be?”
“Adjective, sir,” said Chips, beginning to wonder whether it was one.
“Exactly!” cried Haigh, with the guffaw of his lighter moments. “So you
get _Muta silet vox ista placens, tua carmina vivunt_—'Thy pleasant
voices are still; on the other hand, however, thy nightingales are
awake’—eh?”
“Yes, sir,” said Chips, more doubtfully than before.
“Have you a comma after the word 'nightingales’ in the English line as
you took it down?”
“No, sir.”
“_That_ accounts for it! Ha, ha, ha! But it may be my fault.” Nothing
could exceed the geniality of Haigh towards a boy with Carpenter’s
little gift. He was going through the week’s verses on the chimneypiece
in his hall, but now he turned his back to the blazing fire. “Will those
who have a comma after 'nightingales’ be good enough to hold up their
hands?” A forest of hands flew up. “I’m afraid it’s your mistake,
Carpenter,” resumed Haigh, with a final guffaw. “Well, I couldn’t have
pitched upon a finer object-lesson in the importance of punctuation, if
I had tried; but when you come to look at it again, Carpenter, you’ll
find that even without the comma your reading was more ingenious than
plausible.” He turned back to the chimneypiece and the pile of verses.
The incident seemed closed, when suddenly Haigh was seen frowning
thoughtfully into the fire. “Surely there was some other fellow did the
same thing!” he exclaimed, and began glancing through the pile. “Ah!
Rutter, of course! _Jucundæ voces tacitæ sunt, carmina vivunt!_”
His voice was completely changed as it rasped out the abhorred surname;
it changed again before the end of Jan’s hexameter.
“Were you helped in this, Rutter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you help him, Carpenter?”
“Yes, sir.”
There was not an instant’s hesitation before either answer. Yet the very
readiness of the culprits to confess their crime was an evident
aggravation in the eyes of Haigh, who flew into a passion on the spot.
“And you own up to it without a blush between you! And you, Rutter,
expect me to believe that the same thing didn’t happen last week, when
you denied it!”
“It did not happen last week, sir,” said Jan; but all save the first
three words were drowned by Haigh.
“Silence!” he roared. “I don’t believe a word you say. But I begin to
think you’re not such a fool as you pretend to be, Rutter; you saw you
were found out at last, so you might as well make a clean breast of it!
_That_ doesn’t minimise the effect of cheating, or the impudence of the
offence in a brace of beggarly new boys. Perhaps you are not aware how
dishonesty is treated in this school? I would send you both up to Mr.
Thrale at twelve o’clock, but we don’t consider that a flogging meets
this kind of case. It’s rather one in which the whole must suffer for
the corruption of a part. I shall consider the question of a detention
for the entire form, and we’ll see if _they_ can’t knock some
rudimentary sense of honour into you!”
The two delinquents trembled in their shoes; they knew what they were in
for now. Had they entertained a single doubt about the matter, a glance
at the black looks encompassing them would have prepared them for the
worst. But Chips had not the heart to lift his eyes, and so a slip of
paper was thoughtfully passed down to him by Shockley. “I’ll murder you
for this,” it said; and the storm burst upon the hapless couple the
moment they were out in Haigh’s quad after second school.
“What the deuce do you both mean by owning up?”
“I wasn’t going to tell a lie about it,” said Jan, doggedly.
“No more was I!” squealed Chips, as Shockley twisted his arm to breaking
point behind his back.
“Oh, yes, you’re so plucky pious, aren’t you? Couldn’t do Thicksides
with other people; too highly moral and plucky superior for that; but
not above doing the Tiger’s verses, and getting the whole form kept in!”
“It isn’t for getting your verses done,” cried another big fellow,
frankly, as he tried but failed to get a free kick at Rutter: “it’s for
being such infernal young fools as to own up!”
So much for the sense of honour to be knocked into the fraudulent pair
by the rest of the form! It was a revelation to Carpenter and Rutter.
They knew that Shockley and Buggins rarely did a line of any sort of
composition for themselves, and more than once they had heard the pair
indignantly repudiate the slightest suggestion against their good faith
on the part of Haigh. But these poor specimens in their own house and
form were the only fellows whose code of honour they had been hitherto
able to probe. And it did surprise them to find some of the nicest
fellows in the form entirely at one with their particular enemies in
condemning the honesty which had got them all into trouble.
Was it a good system that could bring this about? The two boys did not
ask themselves that question; nor did it occur to them to carry their
grievance to Mr. Heriot, whose expert opinion would have been as
interesting as his almost certain action in the matter. But in the
bitterness of their hearts they did feel that an injustice had been
done; and one of them at any rate was very sorry that he had told the
truth. He would know what to say another time. Yet how human the fury of
the form, threatened with punishment for an offence for which only two
of their number were responsible, and subtly suborned by the master to
do his dirty work by venting their natural anger on the luckless pair!
Could any trick be shabbier in a master? Could any scheme be more
demoralising for boys? The effect on them was easily seen. They were to
inculcate a higher sense of schoolboy honour. And the first thing they
did was to curse and kick you for not piling dishonour on dishonour’s
head!
Chips and Jan did not see the fiendish humour of the situation, any more
than they looked beyond their immediate oppressors for first principles
and causes. But whatever may be said for the punishment of many for the
act of one or two, as the only thing to do in certain cases, it would
still be hard to justify the course pursued by Mr. Haigh, who held his
threat over the whole form until the two boys’ lives had been made a
sufficient misery to them, and then only withdrew it in consideration of
a special holiday task, to be learnt by heart at home and said to him
without a mistake (on pain of further penalties) when they came back
after Christmas.