When chapel was over, Walter, having brushed his hair, and made himself rather neater and more spruce than a schoolboy usually is at the middle of a long half, went to Mr Percival's room. Mr Percival, having been detained, had not yet come in; but Henderson, Kenrick, and Power, who had also been asked to tea, were there waiting for him when Walter arrived, and Henderson, as usual, amusing the others and himself with a flood of mimicry and nonsense. "You know that mischievous little Penkridge," said Kenrick; "he nearly had an accident this morning. We were in the classroom, and Edwards was complaining of the bad smell of the room--" "Bad smell!" interrupted Henderson, "I'll bet you what you like Edwards didn't say bad smell. _He's_ not the man to call a spade a spade; he calls it an agricultural implement for the trituration of the soil." "Why, what _should_ he say?" asked Kenrick, "if he didn't say `bad smell'?" "Why, `What a malodorous effluvium!'" said Henderson, imitating exactly the master's somewhat drawling tone; "`what a con-cen-trra-ted malarious miasma; what an unendurable'--I say Power, give us the Greek, or Hebrew, or Kamschatkan, for `smell.'" "Odwde," suggested Power. "That's it to a T," said Henderson; "I bet you he observed, `What an un-en-duu-rrable osus.' Now, didn't he? Confess the truth." "Well, I believe he did say something of the kind," said Kenrick, laughing; "at least I know he called it Stygian and Tartarean. But, as I was saying, he set Penkridge (who happened to be going round with the lists) to examine the cupboards, and see if by chance some inopportune rat had died there; and Penkridge, opening one of them where the floor was very rotten, and poking about with his foot, knocked a great piece of plaster off the great schoolroom ceiling, and was as nearly as possible putting his foot through it." "Fancy if he had," said Walter, "how astonished we should have been down below. I say, Henderson, what _would_ Paton have said?" "Oh! Paton," said Henderson, delighted with any opportunity for mimicry, "he'd have whispered quietly, in an emotionless voice, `Penkridge, Penkridge, come here--come here, Penkridge. This is a very unusual method, Penkridge, of entering a room--highly irregular. If you haven't broken your leg or your arm, Penkridge, you must write me two hundred lines.'" "And Robertson?" asked Kenrick. "Oh! Robertson--he'd have put up his eye-glass," said Henderson, again exactly hitting off the master's attitude, "and he'd have observed, `Ah! Penkridge has fallen through the floor; probably fractured some bones. Slippery fellow, he won't be able to go to the Fighting Cocks _this_ afternoon, at any rate.' Whereupon Stevens would have gone up to him with the utmost tenderness, and asked him if he was hurt; and Penkridge, getting up, would, by way of gratitude, have grinned in his face." "Well, you'd better finish the scene," said Power; "what would Percival have said?"