"Doesn"t want to run any risks."
"Shouldn"t wonder."
"He"s such a rotten head of the House, too," said Vaughan. "Ward may gas about my being headstrong and thoughtless, but I"m dashed if I would make a bally exhibition of myself like the Mutual."
"What"s he do?" enquired the Babe.
"It"s not so much what he does. It"s what he doesn"t do that sickens me," said Dallas. "I may be a bit of a crock in some ways--for further details apply to Ward--but I can stop a couple of f.a.gs ragging if I try."
"Can"t Plunkett?"
"Not for nuts. He"s simply helpless when there"s anything going on that he ought to stop. Why, the other day there was a row in the f.a.gs" room that you could almost have heard at your place, Babe. We were up here working. The Mutual was jawing as usual on the subject of cramming tips for the Aeschylus exam. Said it wasn"t scholarship, or some rot. What business is it of his how a chap works, I should like to know. Just as he had got under way, the f.a.gs began kicking up more row than ever."
"I said", cut in Vaughan, "that instead of minding other people"s business, he"d better mind his own for a change, and go down and stop the row."
"He looked a bit green at that," said Dallas. "Said the row didn"t interfere with him. "Does with us," I said. "It"s all very well for you. You aren"t doing a stroke of work. No amount of row matters to a chap who"s only delivering a rotten sermon on scholarship. Vaughan and I happen to be trying to do some work." "All right," he said, "if you want the row stopped, why don"t you go and stop it? What"s it got to do with me?""
"Rotter!" interpolated the Babe.
"Wasn"t he? Well, of course we couldn"t stand that."
"We crushed him," said Vaughan.
"I said: "In my young days the head of the House used to keep order for himself." I asked him what he thought he was here for. Because he isn"t ornamental. So he went down after that."
"Well?" said the Babe. Being a miserable day boy he had had no experience of the inner life of a boarding House, which is the real life of a public school. His experience of life at St Austin"s was limited to doing his work and playing centre-three-quarter for the fifteen. Which, it may be remarked in pa.s.sing, he did extremely well.
Dallas took up the narrative. "Well, after he"d been gone about five minutes, and the row seemed to be getting worse than ever, we thought we"d better go down and investigate. So we did."
"And when we got to the f.a.gs" room," said Vaughan, pointing the toasting-fork at the Babe by way of emphasis, "there was the Mutual standing in the middle of the room ga.s.sing away with an expression on his face a cross between a village idiot and an unintelligent fried egg. And all round him was a seething ma.s.s of f.a.gs, half of them playing soccer with a top-hat and the other half cheering wildly whenever the Mutual opened his mouth."
"What did you do?"
"We made an aggressive movement in force. Collared the hat, brained every f.a.g within reach, and swore we"d report them to the beak and so on. They quieted down in about three and a quarter seconds by stopwatch, and we retired, taking the hat as a prize of war, and followed by the Mutual Friend."
"He looked worried, rather," said Vaughan. "And, thank goodness, he let us alone for the rest of the evening."
"That"s only a sample, though," explained Dallas. "That sort of thing has been going on the whole term. If the head of a House is an abject lunatic, there"s bound to be ructions. f.a.gs simply live for the sake of kicking up rows. It"s meat and drink to them."
"I wish the Mutual would leave," said Vaughan. "Only that sort of chap always lingers on until he dies or gets sacked."
"He"s not the sort of fellow to get sacked, I should say," said the Babe.
"Fraid not. I wish I could shunt into some other House. Between Ward and the Mutual life here isn"t worth living."
"There"s Merevale"s, now," said Vaughan. "I wish I was in there. In the first place you"ve got Merevale. He gets as near perfection as a beak ever does. Coaches the House footer and cricket, and takes an intelligent interest in things generally. Then there are some decent fellows in Merevale"s. Charteris, Welch, Graham, Thomson, heaps of them."
"Pity you came to Ward"s," said the Babe. "Why did you?"
"My pater knew Ward a bit. If he"d known him well, he"d have sent me somewhere else."
"My pater knew Vaughan"s pater well, who knew Ward slightly and there you are. _Voila comme des accidents arrivent_."
"If Ward wanted to lug in a day boy to be head of the House," said Vaughan, harping once more on the old string, "he might at least have got somebody decent."
"There"s the great Babe himself. Babe, why don"t you come in next term?"
"Not much," said the Babe, with a shudder.
"Well, even barring present company, there are lots of chaps who would have jumped at the chance of being head of a House. But nothing would satisfy Ward but lugging the Mutual from the bosom of his beastly family."
"We haven"t decided that point about where he goes to," said the Babe.
At this moment the door of the study opened, and the gentleman in question appeared in person. He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, gasping and throwing his arms about as if he found a difficulty in making his way in.
"I wish you two wouldn"t make such an awful froust in the study _every_ afternoon," he observed, pleasantly. "Have you been having a little tea-party? How nice!"
"We"ve been brewing, if that"s what you mean," said Vaughan, shortly.
"Oh," said Plunkett, "I hope you enjoyed yourselves. It"s nearly lock-up, MacArthur."
"That"s Plunkett"s delicate way of telling you you"re not wanted, Babe."
"Well, I suppose I ought to be going," said the Babe. "So long."
And he went, feeling grateful to Providence for not having made his father, like the fathers of Vaughan and Dallas, a casual acquaintance of Mr Ward.
The Mutual Friend really was a trial to Vaughan and Dallas. Only those whose fate it is or has been to share a study with an uncongenial companion can appreciate their feelings to the full. Three in a study is always something of a tight fit, and when the three are in a state of perpetual warfare, or, at the best, of armed truce, things become very bad indeed.
"Do you find it necessary to have tea-parties every evening?" enquired Plunkett, after he had collected his books for the night"s work. "The smell of burnt meat--"
"Fried sausages," said Vaughan. "Perfectly healthy smell. Do you good."
"It"s quite disgusting. Really, the air in here is hardly fit to breathe."
"You"ll find an excellent brand of air down in the senior study," said Dallas, pointedly. "Don"t stay and poison yourself here on _our_ account," he added. "Think of your family."
"I shall work where I choose," said the Mutual Friend, with dignity.
"Of course, so long as you do work. You mustn"t talk. Vaughan and I have got some Livy to do."
Plunkett snorted, and the pa.s.sage of arms ended, as it usually did, in his retiring with his books to the senior study, leaving Dallas and Vaughan to discuss his character once more in case there might be any points of it left upon which they had not touched in previous conversations.
"This robbery of the pots is a rum thing," said Vaughan, thoughtfully, when the last shreds of Plunkett"s character had been put through the mincing-machine to the satisfaction of all concerned.
"Yes. It"s the sort of thing one doesn"t think possible till it actually happens."
"What the d.i.c.kens made them put the things in the Pav. at all? They must have known it wouldn"t be safe."