Boys -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Schools -- Fiction
Two days after I had to carry another note to Mabel, and found one
waiting for Bradwell in the usual place; so they must have made it up.
Then came the beginning of my misforchunes with Browne. He found the
snake appeering to Sulla in my Latin grammar, and called me up and said
he knew very well I hadn’t drawn it myself, but wanted to know who had.
He said it was wrong to the Doctor to ruin our books, and that he had
seen in several different books the same snake, evidently done by the
same boy, owing to them being so much similar.
But the very identical thing had happened in another class--to Steggles,
Bradwell having drawn him the same picture; and knowing what Steggles
said, being a chap who is frightfully cunning, I said the same now to
Browne. I said I left the book on my desk, and somebody came along and
done it while I was out of the room. Browne seemed inclined not to
believe this. Anyway, he took the Latin grammar away with him. But I
heard no more about it till the next evening, when I wanted the book in
prep. Remembering Browne had it, I went off to his study and knocked and
walked in.
Browne wasn’t there for the moment, and the room was empty. I took the
opportunity to look at a rather butiful tobacco-jar of Browne’s which I
have seen at a distance on his mantlepiece many times. Passing his table
to get to it, I chanced to glance there, and juge of my surprise when
the first words I saw at the top of a big sheet of paper were, "To
Mabel"! Underneeth was a lot of writing, and the whole table seemed to
be littered with paper covered with small bits of separate writing, much
of it scratched out and done over again. But the piece with “To Mabel”
at the top was all butiful and clean, without anything scratched, being,
I suppose, the result of all the other bits put together and neetly
copied out.
Well, there I was with my duty towards Bradwell as his fag. Browne had
evidently done a verse out of his own head for Mabel Dunston, and had
written it in this butiful style, on thick white paper, to send to her.
I felt if she got it, knowing what she’d said to Bradwell about Browne,
that it was certin she would abbandon Bradwell, him not being any good
at poems. I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else in the world _but_
Bradwell; I wouldn’t have done it at all if I had known what the end of
it was going to be; but, anyway, at the time it seemed to me, as
Bradwell s fag, I ought to do it; so I did.
I took the poem and rolled it up so as not to hurt it, and hooked off to
Bradwell. He was in his study, and Trelawny, who shares it with him,
being out of the room, I was able to explain. I said:
“If you please, Bradwell, I’ve come from Mr. Browne’s study, and he was
not there, and happening by a curious axcident to glance on the table I
saw this. Knowing about you and Mabel, and being your fag, I took it.”
“Took what?” said Bradwell.
I put the thing in front of him, and he got red and excited.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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