Boarding schools -- England -- Juvenile fiction; Boys -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Schools -- Juvenile fiction
"Didn't you hear me say I'd only just got enough to pay for my own? But
I tell you what; you can hide under the table. You're not known."
Ashby looked round, and felt about with his foot under the table to
ascertain what room there might be there. Then he flushed up. "No, I
shan't," said he; "I'd get into the row instead."
As his eye travelled round and marked the curious smile on every face it
suddenly dawned upon him that he had been "done." His first sensation
was one of immense relief. He should not have to pay for his dinner
after all! His second was a cunning device for getting out of the
dilemma.
"I thought you'd begin to laugh soon," said he to D'Arcy. "I knew you
couldn't keep it up."
D'Arcy turned very red in the face and glared at this audacious
youngster in deserved wrath.
"What do you mean, you young ass? You know you've swallowed it all."
"He swallowed all the grub anyhow," said another.
"No, I've not," said Master Ashby. "I'd have another go-in now. I knew
he'd have to laugh in the end."
It was hopeless to deal seriously with a rebel of this sort. D'Arcy
tried to ride off on the high horse; but it was not a very grand
spectacle, and Ashby, munching up the remains of his roll, was generally
held to have scored. The relief with which he hailed the discovery of
his mistake was so genuine, and the good spirits and appetite the
incident put into him were so imperturbable, as to disarm further
experiment at his expense, and he was left comparatively free to enjoy
the noise and imbibe his first impression of Fellsgarth in his own way.
The other new boy, meanwhile, was not altogether without his
difficulties.
Fisher minor, to which name this ingenuous young gentleman answered,
would probably have been the first to pour contempt on the verdure of
his companion. He had come up to Fellsgarth determined that, in
whatever respect he failed, no one should lightly convict him of being
green. He had wormed out of his brother in the Sixth a few hints of
what was considered the proper thing at Fellsgarth, and these, with the
aid of his own brilliant intellect and reminiscences of what he had read
in the books, served, as he hoped, both to forewarn and forearm him
against all the uncomfortable predicaments into which the ordinary new
boy is apt to fall.
It must be confessed that as he sat and listened to the noise, and
marked how little Fellsgarth appeared to recognise his existence, he
felt a trifle uneasy and nervous. He wasn't sure now that he knew
everything. All these fellows seemed to be so thoroughly at home, and
to know so exactly what to do; he wished he could do the same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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