There were boys having fencing-matches with rulers across the aisle.
There were others who took no end of pains to make paper arrows, or spitb.a.l.l.s that would stick to the ceiling. In the corners of their desks might be bird"s eggs in need of fresh air. Some of the boys were reading adventure stories, covered up to look like school-books.
In the midst of this Babel, you were expected to get your lessons as well as you could.
When it came to meal-times, you went into what was called "Big Hall,"
where four hundred boys ate together.
The beef was tough enough to make a suitcase: the milk was like chalk and water: the potatoes would have done to plaster a ceiling or cement a wall. How different it all was from the good though simple fare at home!
"Want to join a brewing company?" asked the boy across the table.
"What"s a brewing company?" inquired Wilf.
"We buy sausages and cook "em in saucepans over the fire--when we can find a fire."
"Yes, you can count me in," said Wilf. So it didn"t make so much difference after that, if he couldn"t eat what was set before him at the table.
But usually the boys brought robust appet.i.tes to their meals, for they went in heavily for all forms of athletics. The boys who didn"t make the teams had to drill in the gymnasium or run round and round an open air track a mile and a half long. If you shirked, the boys themselves saw to it that you got punished.
When Wilf came home to Cheshire for the long vacations he found some poor little ragam.u.f.fins who had no fun in their lives, and started a club for them in his own house. There were no boy scouts in those days, when Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Ernest Thompson Seton were little boys themselves. It was just taken for granted that boys would be boys, and it was hoped that they would grow up to be good men, if after school hours they were allowed to run loose in the streets. But Grenfell had a different idea.
He turned the dining-room on Sat.u.r.day evenings into a gymnasium.
He pushed aside the table and chucked the chairs out of the window.
"Now any of you fellows who want to can get busy on the parallel bars," he told them, "or if you like you can go out into the back yard and pitch quoits. I"ll take on anybody who wants to box with me."
The boys thought it was heaps of fun. They could hardly wait for Sat.u.r.day night to come, because it meant the rare sport of banging another boy in the nose, which was much more satisfactory than throwing stones at a policeman.
After he was big enough, he used to go to lodging-houses where men slept who were down and out. He knew that drink had brought them low, and he wanted to show them better things to do.
The saloon-keepers were against him from the start. He was depriving them of some of their best customers.
"You"re spoiling our business," they grumbled.
At last they made up their minds they would "get" him.
They collected a "gang" and one night they locked the door, backed up against it, and shouted:
"Come on, young feller! We"re goin" to fix you!"
They rolled up their sleeves, clenched their fists, and sailed into him full-tilt like a big, angry crowd of human bees.
Grenfell was ready for them. It was like a fight in the movies.
He had kept himself in fine condition, for he was in training to play football and he was known to be a first-rate boxer.
They flew at him, roaring to encourage one another. There were six or eight of them, but they were afraid of his fists.
"Come on, boys!"
"Hit "im a good "un, Bill! "E"s spoilin" our business, that"s what "e"s doin"."
"Push in his face. "Ammer "im good "n" proper!"
"We"ll show "im what"s what!"
""E"s a noosance. Le"s get rid of "im. Lemme get at "im once. I"ll show "im!"
So they came on, clumsy with drink, but their maudlin outcries didn"t scare Grenfell a bit.
He was waiting for them,--cool, quiet, determined.
Their diet was mostly bad ale and beer, or whiskey: Grenfell was all muscle, from constant exercise and wholesome diet--the roast beef of old England, whole wheat bread, plenty of rich milk.
They were no match for him.
On they came, one after another. The first lunged out heavily; Grenfell parried the blow with his right hand and landed his left on the jaw. The ruffian fell to the floor like a log of wood and lay there. As he fell, he clutched at the corner of the table and overturned it with a mighty crash on top of him.
The second man got a blow on the nose that sent him over to the corner to wipe away the blood. The rest Grenfell laid out flat on the floor in one, two, three order.
They came at him again, those who were able to go on. They got their arms around him but he threw them off. They kicked him and he knocked them down again. They bit and clawed and scratched and used all the foul tactics that they knew.
They tried to get him from both sides--they rushed at him from the front and the rear at the same time.
Agile as a cat he turned and faced them whichever way they came, and those quick, hard fists of his shot out and hit them on the chin or on the nose till they bled like stuck pigs and bawled for mercy.
Grenfell stood there amid the wrecked furniture, his clothes torn, bleeding and triumphant. "Want any more?" he smiled.
When they saw that all combined they were no match for this wildcat they had roused to action, they said:
"Well, le"s call it quits. Le"s have peace."
They never tackled him again. They didn"t know much, to be sure, but they knew when they had had enough of "a first-cla.s.s fighting man."
Then Grenfell started camping-parties with poor boys who hadn"t any money to spend for holidays. The first summer he had thirteen at the seash.o.r.e.
A boy had to take a sea-bath before he got his breakfast. No one could go in a boat unless he could swim. The beds were hay-stuffed burlap bags. A lifeboat retired from service was more fun than Noah"s Ark to keep the happy company afloat for a fishing-party or a picnic.
Next year there were thirty boys: then the number grew to a hundred, and more. Not one life was lost. How they loved it all! Especially when the boat, twelve boys at the oars, came plunging in, on the returning tide, with the boys all singing at the top of their voices:
"Here we come rejoicing, Pulling at the sweeps"
to the rhythmic tune of "Bringing in the Sheaves." Then, when the boat"s keel slid into the sand, it was a mad rush for the best supper boys ever ate.
His school days over, instead of going to Oxford University, Grenfell chose to enter the London Hospital, so as to take his examinations at London University later, and become a doctor.
While Grenfell was in the hospital, murder was quite the fashion in London. Many a time his patients had a policeman sitting behind a screen at the foot of the bed, ready to nab them if they got up and tried to climb out of a window.