`It looked like it,' said Stalky. `But I don't think Seffy need come into hall with cock-eye whiskers. Horrid bad for the fags if they saw him. He can shave. Ain't you grateful, Sefton?'
The head did not lift. Sefton was deeply asleep.
`That's rummy,' said M`Turk, as a snore mixed with a sob. `'Cheek, I think; or else he's shammin'.'
`No, 'tisn't,' said Beetle. `When "Molly" Fairburn had attended to me for an hour or so I used to go bung off to sleep on a form sometimes. Poor devil! But he called me a beastly poet, though.'
`Well, come on.' Stalky lowered his voice. `Good-bye, Campbell. 'Member, if you don't talk, nobody will.'
There should have been a war-dance, but that all three were so utterly tired that they almost went to sleep above the tea-cups in their study, and slept till prep.
`A most extraordinary letter. Are all parents incurably mad? What do you make of it?' said the Head, handing a closely-written eight pages to the Reverend John.
`"The only son of his mother, and she a widow." That is the least reasonable sort.' The chaplain read with pursed lips.
`If half those charges are true he should be in the sick-house; whereas he is disgustingly well. Certainly he has shaved. I noticed that.'
`Under compulsion, as his mother points out. How delicious! How salutary!'
`You haven't to answer her. It isn't often I don't know what has happened in the school; but this is beyond me.'
`If you asked me I should say seek not to propitiate. When one is forced to take crammers' pups--'
`He was perfectly well at extra-tution--with me--this morning,' said the Head absently. `Unusually well- behaved, too.'
`--they either educate the school, or the school, as in this case, educates them. I prefer our own methods,' the chaplain concluded.
`You think it was that?' A lift of the Head's eyebrow.
`I'm sure of it! And nothing excuses his trying to give the College a bad name.'
`That's the line I mean to take with him,' the Head answered.
The Augurs winked.
A few days later the Reverend John called on Number Five. `Why haven't we seen you before, Padre?' said they.
`I've been watching times and seasons and events and men--and boys,' he replied. `I am pleased with my Tenth Legion. I make them my compliments. Clewer was throwing ink-balls in form this morning, instead of doing his work. He is now doing fifty lines for--unheard-of audacity.'
`You can't blame us, sir,' said Beetle. `You told us to remove the--er--pressure. That's the worst of a fag.'
`I've known boys five years his senior throw ink-balls, Beetle. To such an one have I given two hundred lines--not so long ago. And now I come to think of it, were those lines ever shown up?'