Stalky & Co.

“Let’s finish up with a row with the Sixth,” suggested McTurk.

“Dirty little schoolboys!” said Stalky, who already saw himself a Sandhurst cadet. “What’s the use?”

“Moral effect,” quoth McTurk. “Leave an imperishable tradition, and all the rest of it.”

“Better go into Bideford an’ pay up our debts,” said Stalky. “I’ve got three quid out of my father —ad hoc. Don’t owe more than thirty bob, either. Cut along, Beetle, and ask the Head for leave. Say you want to correct the ‘Swillingford Patriot.’”

“Well, I do,” said Beetle. “It’ll be my last issue, and I’d like it to look decent. I’ll catch him before he goes to his lunch.”

Ten minutes later they wheeled out in line, by grace released from five o’clock call-over, and all the afternoon lay before them. So also unluckily did King, who never passed without witticisms. But brigades of Kings could not have ruffled Beetle that day.

“Aha! Enjoying the study of light literature, my friends,” said he, rubbing his hands. “Common mathematics are not for such soaring minds as yours, are they?”

(“One hundred a year,” thought Beetle, smiling into vacancy.)

“Our open incompetence takes refuge in the flowery paths of inaccurate fiction. But a day of reckoning approaches, Beetle mine. I myself have prepared a few trifling foolish questions in Latin prose which can hardly be evaded even by your practised acts of deception. Ye-es, Latin prose. I think, if I may say so – but we shall see when the papers are set – ‘Ulpian serves your need.’ Aha! ‘Elucescebat, quoth our friend.’ We shall see! We shall see!”

Still no sign from Beetle. He was on a steamer, his passage paid into the wide and wonderful world – a thousand leagues beyond Lundy Island.

King dropped him with a snarl.

“He doesn’t know. He’ll go on correctin’ exercises an’ jawin’ an’ showin’ off before the little boys next term – and next.” Beetle hurried after his companions up the steep path of the furze-clad hill behind the College.

They were throwing pebbles on the top of the gasometer, and the grimy gas-man in change bade them desist. They watched him oil a turncock sunk in the ground between two furze-bushes.

“Cokey, what’s that for?” said Stalky.

“To turn the gas on to the kitchens,” said Cokey. “If so be I didn’t turn her on, yeou young gen’lemen ‘ud be larnin’ your book by candlelight.”

“Um!” said Stalky, and was silent for at least a minute.

“Hullo! Where are you chaps going?” A bend of the lane brought them face to face with Tulke, senior prefect of King’s house – a smallish, white-haired boy, of the type that must be promoted on account of its intellect, and ever afterwards appeals to the Head to support its authority when zeal has outrun discretion.

The three took no sort of notice. They were on lawful pass. Tulke repeated his question hotly, for he had suffered many slights from Number Five study, and fancied that he had at last caught them tripping.

“What the devil is that to you?” Stalky replied with his sweetest smile.

“Look here, I’m not goin’ – I’m not goin’ to be sworn at by the Fifth!” sputtered Tulke.

“Then cut along and call a prefects’ meeting,” said McTurk, knowing Tulke’s weakness.

The prefect became inarticulate with rage.

“Mustn’t yell at the Fifth that way,” said Stalky. “It’s vile bad form.”

“Cough it up, ducky!” McTurk said calmly.

“I – I want to know what you chaps are doing out of bounds?” This with an important flourish of his ground-ash.

“Ah,” said Stalky. “Now we’re gettin’ at it. Why didn’t you ask that before?”

“Well, I ask it now. What are you doing?”

“We’re admiring you, Tulke,” said Stalky. “We think you’re no end of a fine chap, don’t we?”

“We do! We do!” A dog-cart with some girls in it swept round the corner, and Stalky promptly kneeled before Tulke in the attitude of prayer; so Tulke turned a color.

“I’ve reason to believe – ” he began.

“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” shouted Beetle, after the manner of Bideford’s town crier, “Tulke has reason to believe! Three cheers for Tulke!”

They were given. “It’s all our giddy admiration,” said Stalky. “You know how we love you, Tulke. We love you so much we think you ought to go home and die. You’re too good to live, Tulke.”

“Yes,” said McTurk. “Do oblige us by dyin’. Think how lovely you’d look stuffed!”

Tulke swept up the road with an unpleasant glare in his eye.

“That means a prefects’ meeting – sure pop,” said Stalky. “Honor of the Sixth involved, and all the rest of it. Tulke’ll write notes all this afternoon, and Carson will call us up after tea. They daren’t overlook that.”

“Bet you a bob he follows us!” said McTurk. “He’s King’s pet, and it’s scalps to both of ‘em if we’re caught out. We must be virtuous.”

“Then I move we go to Mother Yeo’s for a last gorge. We owe her about ten bob, and Mary’ll weep sore when she knows we’re leaving,” said Beetle.

“She gave me an awful wipe on the head last time – Mary,” said Stalky.

“She does if you don’t duck,” said McTurk. “But she generally kisses one back. Let’s try Mother Yeo.”

They sought a little bottle-windowed half dairy, half restaurant, a dark-brewed, two-hundred-year-old house, at the head of a narrow side street. They had patronized it from the days of their fagdom, and were very much friends at home.

“We’ve come to pay our debts, mother,” said Stalky, sliding his arm round the fifty-six-inch waist of the mistress of the establishment. “To pay our debts and say good-by – and – and we’re awf’ly hungry.”

“Aie!” said Mother Yeo, “makkin’ love to me! I’m shaamed of ‘ee.”

“‘Rackon us wouldn’t du no such thing if Mary was here,” said McTurk, lapsing into the broad North Devon that the boys used on their campaigns.

“Who’m takin’ my name in vain?” The inner door opened, and Mary, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and apple-checked, entered with a bowl of cream in her hands. McTurk kissed her. Beetle followed suit, with exemplary calm. Both boys were promptly cuffed.

“Niver kiss the maid when ‘e can kiss the mistress,” said Stalky, shamelessly winking at Mother Yeo, as he investigated a shelf of jams.

“Glad to see one of ‘ee don’t want his head slapped no more?” said Mary invitingly, in that direction.

“Neu! Reckon I can get ‘em give me,” said Stalky, his back turned.

“Not by me – yeou little masterpiece!”

“Niver asked ‘ee. There’s maids to Northam. Yiss – an’ Appledore.” An unreproducible sniff, half contempt, half reminiscence, rounded the retort.

“Aie! Yeou won’t niver come to no good end. Whutt be ‘baout, smellin’ the cream?”