Boys -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Schools -- Fiction
So Bray, by the terms of the match, lost, and Corkey minimus won with
the yard measure.
Then the feeling between them grew, especially after Bray said that he
could only pay his half-crown in instalments of a penny a week.
Now we come to Milly. You see she was Corkey minor’s great pal the term
before, but now that he was at sea, and thousands of miles off, she
chucked him and turned to Corkey minimus. That shows what she was
really. Anyway, in a bad moment for young Corkey, she told him he had
eyes like an eagle’s, and it simply turned his head. As an eagle’s eyes
are yellow, I couldn’t see myself what there was to be so jolly pleased
about; but he was, and, to show you what a chap may come to if a girl
collars him, I know for a fact that Corkey minimus tried to paint a
picture for her. Whether he actually succeeded I cannot say, but he went
down four places in class, and got awfully dropped on by Browne.
Then came that attempt of Bray to cut Corkey out, and, being myself a
tremendous personal chum of Corkey’s, I wished he had succeeded; but he
didn’t, and even his fighting didn’t take Milly. After a month of giving
her things to eat and so on, he said it was his red hair that stood
between them, and told Fowle he didn’t care a straw about her; but from
the way he went on to Corkey minimus, any fool could see he really cared
a lot. The chap called Fowle comes in here. This “obscene Fowle,” as we
called him out of Virgil, being really a term in a crib applied to
harpies, though he would have run if a mouse had squeaked at him, was
yet responsible for more fights than any fellow in the school. He
sneaked about, asking chaps if they gave one another “best,” and when at
last he found two who didn’t funk each other, though they might be
perfectly good friends, he never rested until there was a fight. He got
kicked sometimes, but not enough. That was owing to the fact that his
hampers from home were most extraordinary. They came on Roman feast
days, because he was a Roman Catholic by religion; and some fellows even
said the more you kicked Fowle the more you were likely to get from the
hampers. That was rot, of course, and a jolly suspicious thing happened
once. Newnes--a chap in the lower Fifth--kicked Fowle the very morning
before a hamper came; and that same evening, after prayers, Fowle gave
Newnes about half a whacking big melon, and the next day Newnes jolly
near died. Fowle swore he hadn’t put anything in the melon, but it is
bosh to say that half a melon, if it’s all right, is going to do a chap
any harm. Anyway, we rather funked Fowle’s hampers afterwards.
Well, this wretched, obscene Fowle met me one day licking his fat lips
and showing great excitement. So I knew he’d probably worked up a fight;
but it wasn’t that, though something worse. He said:
“Where’s Corkey minimus? Bray wants him.”
“What for?” I said. I may mention that I am called McInnes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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