'I asked for fifteen. Got it, too. I've spent a pound of it. I said I
wanted to buy a bike. You can get a jolly good bike for five quid
about, so you see I scoop ten pounds. What?'
This ingenious, if slightly unscrupulous, feat gave Gethryn an insight
into his uncle's character which up till now he had lacked. He began to
see that the moral advice with which he had primed himself would be out
of place. Evidently this youth could take quite good care of himself on
his own account. Still, even a budding Professor Moriarty would be none
the worse for being warned against Gethryn's _bete noire_, Monk,
so the Bishop proceeded to deliver that warning.
'Well,' he said, 'you seem to be able to look out for yourself all
right, I must say. But there's one tip I really can give you. When you
get to Leicester's, and a beast with a green complexion and an oily
smile comes up and calls you "Old Cha-a-p", and wants you to swear
eternal friendship, tell him it's not good enough. Squash him!'
'Thanks,' said Farnie. 'Who is this genial merchant?'
'Chap called Monk. You'll recognize him by the smell of scent. When you
find the place smelling like an Eau-de-Cologne factory, you'll know
Monk's somewhere near. Don't you have anything to do with him.'
'You seem to dislike the gentleman.'
'I bar the man. But that isn't why I'm giving you the tip to steer
clear of him. There are dozens of chaps I bar who haven't an ounce of
vice in them. And there are one or two chaps who have got tons. Monk's
one of them. A fellow called Danvers is another. Also a beast of the
name of Waterford. There are some others as well, but those are the
worst of the lot. By the way, I forgot to ask, have you ever been to
school before?'
'Yes,' said Farnie, in the dreamy voice of one who recalls memories
from the misty past, 'I was at Harrow before I came here, and at
Wellington before I went to Harrow, and at Clifton before I went to
Wellington.'
Gethryn gasped.
'Anywhere before you went to Clifton?' he enquired.
'Only private schools.'
The recollection of the platitudes which he had been delivering, under
the impression that he was talking to an entirely raw beginner, made
Gethryn feel slightly uncomfortable. What must this wanderer, who had
seen men and cities, have thought of his harangue?
'Why did you leave Harrow?' asked he.
'Sacked,' was the laconic reply.
Have you ever, asks a modern philosopher, gone upstairs in the dark,
and trodden on the last step when it wasn't there? That sensation and
the one Gethryn felt at this unexpected revelation were identical. And
the worst of it was that he felt the keenest desire to know why Harrow
had seen fit to dispense with the presence of his uncle.
'Why?' he began. 'I mean,' he went on hurriedly, 'why did you leave
Wellington?'
'Sacked,' said Farnie again, with the monotonous persistence of a
Solomon Eagle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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