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قراءة كتاب Boycotted, and Other Stories
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
gasp. I believe I had actually begun to speak, when a sound in the passage startled us both, and we passed by as of old—strangers.
I rushed off to my study, ashamed and disappointed, and paced round it like a caged animal. What could I do? Should I write to some of the fellows? Should I tell Draven? or—should I escape?
Then it occurred to me, had not I a right to know why I was being treated like this? What had I done? Was I a sneak, or a leper, or a murderer, that I should thus be excommunicated and tortured? What a fool I had been, not to think of this before! Alas! it was too late now. My pride had made it impossible for me to speak the first word without surrendering all along the line; and even yet, at the eleventh hour, I could not face that. So I shut myself up for another day, miserable, nervous, and ill, and counted the minutes to bedtime.
The evening post brought a letter from Browne, and, thankful for any diversion, and the silent company even of a friendly piece of paper, I crawled off early to my study to make the most of my little comfort.
I started before I had read two lines, and uttered an exclamation of amazement.
“Dear Smither,—
“There’s been a most frightful mistake. By the same post as brought your letter I got enclosed from Williams. What a set of cads they’ve been, and all my fault! I’ve written to Williams that if it’s not all put right in twenty-four hours I’ll come down, disgraced as I am, and tell Draven. I’m in too great a rage to write more. Unless I get a telegram ‘All right!’ by ten to-morrow morning I’ll come.
“Yours ever,—
“P. Browne.”
Williams’s letter enclosed—or rather part of it, for Browne had kept one sheet—was as follows, though my head was swimming so much at the time that I could scarcely take it all in.
“The fellows here haven’t forgotten you, and they’re showing it in a pretty decided way at present. About three weeks ago we discovered that Smither, who called himself your friend, was the sneak who went to Draven the morning you were expelled, and let out about you. He was seen coming from D.’s study early, and young Wright, who happened to be in the next room, heard him speaking about you. Well, we’ve boycotted him. Not a fellow is allowed to speak to him, or notice him, or go near him. Everybody’s been bound over, and unless some one plays traitor, the place will get too hot for him before the term’s up. And serve him right too. Harrison and I—”
Here the letter broke off.
I felt stunned; and, strange to say, the sudden discovery left me as miserable as it found me. I suppose I was ill; but for a short time my passion got the upper hand, and made it worse for me than if I had never known the truth.
But it didn’t last long. There came a knock at the door, and, without waiting for an invitation, Harrison came into the room, looking so miserable and scared that I scarcely recognised him for a moment. He was evidently prepared for any sort of rebuff, and I despised myself far more than him as I heard the half-frightened voice in which he began.
“Smither, old man—”
He got no farther; or at least I did not hear any more. It seemed like a dream after that. I was dimly conscious of his hand on my arm and then round me. The next thing I was aware of was that I was lying in bed, with him sitting beside me sponging my forehead.
“Has the bed-bell rung?” I asked.
“My dear fellow, you’ve been in bed a fortnight,” said he, bending over me; “but you mustn’t talk now.”
After awhile I asked again—
“Why are you here, then?” for the term had had only three days to run when I had been taken ill.
“We couldn’t go, old man. The fellows begged Draven to let them stay till you were out of danger, and he did. They’re all here. This is Christmas Day, and they will be glad to hear you are better. But really you mustn’t talk, please.”
“Tell the fellows to go home, then,” I said, “and wish them a Merry Christmas, and say—”
“Really, old man,” pleaded Harrison, looking quite frightened, “don’t talk.”
That was the quietest, but not the least hopeful Christmas Day I ever spent.
And when Draven’s met again next term, I fancy most of us had got by heart the good Christmas motto, “Goodwill to men,” and were mutually agreed that, whatever manly and noble sports we should engage in during the year, boycotting should not be one of them.
Story 2.
A True Story in two Chapters.
Chapter One.
The Story.
Ferriby had broken up. The rats and mice were having their innings in the schoolrooms, and the big bell was getting rusty for want of exercise. The door of the Lower Third had not had a panel kicked out of it for a whole week, and Dr Allsuch’s pictures and sofas and piano were all stacked up in the Detention Room while their proper quarters underwent a “doing-up.”
There was no mistake about the school having broken up. And yet, if it was so, how came we all to be there this Christmas week, instead of sitting at our own firesides in the bosoms of our own families, anywhere but at Ferriby?
When I say all, I mean all in Jolliffe’s House; the others had cleared out. Bull’s was empty, and Wragg’s, across the quadrangle, had not a ghost of a fellow left. Nor had the doctor’s. Every other house was shut up, but Jolliffe’s was as full up as the night before a county match, and no sign of an exodus.
Of course the reader guesses the reason at once!
“I know,” says one virtuous youth; “they’d all been detained for bad conduct, and stopped their holidays!”
Wrong, my exemplary one! Jolliffe’s was the best behaved house in Ferriby, though I say so who should not. But any one could tell you so. For every thousand lines of imposition the other houses had to turn out Jolliffe’s only had a hundred, and for every half-dozen canes worn out on the horny palms of Bull’s and Wragg’s, one was quite enough for us.
No; the fact was, one of our fellows had had scarlet fever a fortnight before the holidays, and as he was in and out with us for some days before it was discovered, sleeping in our dormitory, and sitting next to us in class it was a settled thing we were all in for it.
So the school was suddenly broken up, the other houses all packed off, the sickly ones among us—there were only one or two—removed to the infirmary, and the rest of us, under the charge of Jolliffe himself, invited to make the best of a bad job, and enjoy ourselves as well as we could, with the promise that if in three weeks no one else showed signs of knocking up, we should be allowed to go home.
Of course, we were awfully sold at first, and by no means in an amiable frame of mind. It is no joke to be done out of Christmas at home. What a dolt that Gilks was to get scarlet fever! Why could he not have waited till he got home?
But after a day or two we shook down, as British boys will, to our lot. After all, it was only a case of putting off our holiday, and meanwhile we were allowed to do anything we liked, short of setting the place on fire, or kicking up a row near the infirmary.
There were enough of us to turn out two good teams at football, or to run a big paper-chase across country, or get up a grand concert of an evening; and not too many of us to crowd into the long dormitory, where, for all we were interfered with, we might have prolonged our bolster matches “from eve to dewy morn.”
In time we came to look upon our confinement as rather a spree than otherwise, and this feeling was considerably heightened by the arrival of several hampers at the beginning of Christmas week, including a magnificent one from Dr Allsuch himself, along with a message bidding us be sure and have a merry