"Only one here--'_adopted_by_the_occupants_of_Number_Five_study_in_relation_to__the_insults_offered_to_Mr._Prout's_house_at_the_recent_meeting_in_Number_Twelve__form-room,_and_the_House_hereby_pass_a_vote_of_censure__on_the_said_study._ That's all.""And she bled all down my shirt, too!" said Beetle.
"An' I'm catty all over," said McTurk, "though I washed twice.""An' I nearly broke Beetle's brolly plantin' her where she would blossom!"The situation was beyond speech, but not laughter. There was some attempt that night to demonstrate against the three in their dormitory; so they came forth.
"You see," Beetle began suavely as he loosened his braces, "the trouble with you is that you're a set of unthinkin' asses. You've no more brains than spidgers. We've told you that heaps of times, haven't we.?""We'll give the three of you a dormitory lickin'. You always jaw at us as if you were prefects," cried one.
"Oh, no, you won't," said Stalky, "because you know that if you did you'd get the worst of it sooner or later. _We_ aren't in any hurry. We can afford to wait for our little revenges. You've made howlin' asses of yourselves, and just as soon as King gets hold of your precious resolutions to-morrow you'll find that out. If you aren't sick an' sorry by to-morrow night, I'll--I'll eat my hat."But or ever the dinner-bell rang the next day Prout's were sadly aware of their error. King received stray members of that house with an exaggerated attitude of fear. Did they purpose to cause him to be dismissed from the College by unanimous resolution? What were their views concerning the government of the school, that he might hasten to give effect to them? he would not offend them for worlds; but he feared--he sadly feared--that his own house, who did not pass resolutions (but washed), might somewhat deride.
King was a happy man, and his house, basking in the favor of his smile, made that afternoon a long penance to the misled Prouts. And Prout himself, with a dull and lowering visage, tried to think out the rights and wrongs of it all, only plunging deeper into bewilderment. Why should his house be called "Stinkers"? Truly, it was a small thing, but he had been trained to believe that straws show which way the wind blows, and that there is no smoke without fire. He approached King in Common-room with a sense of injustice, but King was pleased to be full of airy persiflage that tide, and brilliantly danced dialectical rings round Prout.
"Now," said Stalky at bedtime, ****** pilgrimage through the dormitories before the prefects came by, "_now_ what have you got to say for yourselves? Foster, Carton, Finch, Longbridge, Marlin, Brett! I heard you chaps catchin' it from King--he made hay of you--an' all you could do was to wriggle an' grin an' say, 'Yes, sir,' an'
'No, sir,'' an' 'O, sir,' an' 'Please, sir'! You an' your resolution! Urh!""Oh, shut up, Stalky."
"Not a bit of it. You're a gaudy lot of resolutionists, you are! You've made a sweet mess of it. Perhaps you'll have the decency to leave us alone next time."Here the house grew angry, and in many voices pointed out how this blunder would never have come to pass if Number Five study had helped them from the first.
"But you chaps are so beastly conceited, an'--an' you swaggered into the meetin' as if we were a lot of idiots," growled Orrin of the resolution.
"That's precisely what you are! That's what we've been tryin' to hammer into your thick heads all this time," said Stalky. "Never mind, we'll forgive you. Cheer up.
You can't help bein' asses, you know," and, the enemy's flank deftly turned, Stalky hopped into bed.
That night was the first of sorrow among the jubilant King's. By some accident of under-floor drafts the cat did not vex the dormitory beneath which she lay, but the next one to the right; stealing on the air rather as a pale-blue sensation than as any poignant offense. But the mere adumbration of an odor is enough for the sensitive nose and clean tongue of youth. Decency demands that we draw several carbolized sheets over what the dormitory said to Mr. King and what Mr. King replied. He was genuinely proud of his house and fastidious in all that concerned their well-being. He came; he sniffed; he said things. Next morning a boy in that dormitory confided to his bosom friend, a fag of Macrea's, that there was trouble in their midst which King would fain keep secret.
But Macrea's boy had also a bosom friend in Prout's, a shock-headed fag of malignant disposition, who, when he had wormed out the secret, told--told it in a high-pitched treble that rang along the corridor like a bat's squeak.
"An'--an' they've been calling us 'stinkers' all this week. Why, Harland minor says they simply can't sleep in his dormitory for the stink. Come on!""With one shout and with one cry" Prout's juniors hurled themselves into the war, and through the interval between first and second lesson some fifty twelve-year-olds were embroiled on the gravel outside King's windows to a tune whose _leit-motif_ was the word "stinker.""Hark to the minute-gun at sea!" said Stalky. They were in their study collecting books for second lesson--Latin, with King. "I thought his azure brow was a bit cloudy at prayers. 'She is comin', sister Mary. She is--'""If they make such a row now, what will they do when she really begins to look up an' take notice?""Well, no vulgar repartee, Beetle. Ali we want is to keep out of this row like gentlemen.""'Tis but a little faded flower.' Where's my Horace? Look here, I don't understand what she means by stinkin' out Rattray's dormitory first. We holed in under White's, didn't we?" asked McTurk, with a wrinkled brow.
"Skittish little thing. She's rompin' about all over the place, I suppose.""My Aunt! King'll be a cheerful customer at second lesson. I haven't prepared my Horace one little bit, either," said Beetle. "Come on!"They were outside the form-room door now. It was within five minutes of the bell, and King might arrive at any moment.
