



Produced by A. Elizabeth Warren





STALKY & CO.

By Rudyard Kipling




     “Let us now praise famous men”--
      Men of little showing--
     For their work continueth,
     And their work continueth,
      Greater than their knowing.

     Western wind and open surge
      Tore us from our mothers;
     Flung us on a naked shore
     (Twelve bleak houses by the shore!
     Seven summers by the shore!)
      ‘Mid two hundred brothers.

     There we met with famous men
      Set in office o’er us.
     And they beat on us with rods--
     Faithfully with many rods--
     Daily beat us on with rods--
      For the love they bore us!

     Out of Egypt unto Troy--
      Over Himalaya--
     Far and sure our bands have gone--
     Hy-Brasil or Babylon,
     Islands of the Southern Run,
      And cities of Cathaia!

     And we all praise famous men--
      Ancients of the College;
     For they taught us common sense---
     Tried to teach us common sense--
     Truth and God’s Own Common Sense
      Which is more than knowledge!

     Each degree of Latitude
      Strung about Creation
     Seeth one (or more) of us,
     (Of one muster all of us--
     Of one master all of us--)
      Keen in his vocation.

     This we learned from famous men
      Knowing not its uses
     When they showed in daily work
     Man must finish off his work--
     Right or wrong, his daily work--
      And without excuses.

     Servants of the staff and chain,
      Mine and fuse and grapnel--
     Some before the face of Kings,
     Stand before the face of Kings;
     Bearing gifts to divers Kings--
      Gifts of Case and Shrapnel.

     This we learned from famous men
      Teaching in our borders.
     Who declare’d it was best,
     Safest, easiest and best--
     Expeditious, wise and best--
      To obey your orders.

     Some beneath the further stars
      Bear the greater burden.
     Set to serve the lands they rule,
     (Save he serve no man may rule)
     Serve and love the lands they rule;
      Seeking praise nor guerdon.

     This we learned from famous men
      Knowing not we learned it.
     Only, as the years went by--
     Lonely, as the years went by--
     Far from help as years went by
      Plainer we discerned it.

     Wherefore praise we famous men
      From whose bays we borrow--
     They that put aside Today--
     All the joys of their Today--
     And with toil of their Today
      Bought for us Tomorrow!

     Bless and praise we famous men
      Men of little showing!
     For their work continueth
     And their work continueth
     Broad and deep continueth
      Great beyond their knowing!

     Copyright, 1899. by Rudyard Kipling




CONTENTS


     I.    IN AMBUSH
     II.   SLAVES OF THE LAMP--PART I.
     III.  AN UNSAVORY INTERLUDE
     IV.   THE IMPRESSIONISTS
     V.    THE MORAL REFORMERS
     VI.   A LITTLE PREP.
     VII.  THE FLAG OF THEIR COUNTRY
     VIII. THE LAST TERM
     IX.   SLAVES OF THE LAMP--PART II.




“IN AMBUSH.”


In summer all right-minded boys built huts in the furze-hill behind the
College--little lairs whittled out of the heart of the prickly bushes,
full of stumps, odd root-ends, and spikes, but, since they were strictly
forbidden, palaces of delight. And for the fifth summer in succession,
Stalky, McTurk, and Beetle (this was before they reached the dignity of
a study) had built like beavers a place of retreat and meditation, where
they smoked.

Now, there was nothing in their characters as known to Mr. Prout,
their house-master, at all commanding respect; nor did Foxy, the
subtle red-haired school Sergeant, trust them. His business was to wear
tennis-shoes, carry binoculars, and swoop hawklike upon evil boys. Had
he taken the field alone, that hut would have been raided, for Foxy
knew the manners of his quarry; but Providence moved Mr. Prout,
whose school-name, derived from the size of his feet, was Hoofer, to
investigate on his own account; and it was the cautious Stalky who
found the track of his pugs on the very floor of their lair one peaceful
afternoon when Stalky would fain have forgotten Prout and his works in
a volume of Surtees and a new briar-wood pipe. Crusoe, at sight of the
footprint, did not act more swiftly than Stalky. He removed the pipes,
swept up all loose match-ends, and departed to warn Beetle and McTurk.

But it was characteristic of the boy that he did not approach his allies
till he had met and conferred with little Hartopp, President of the
Natural History Society, an institution which Stalky held in contempt,
Hartopp was more than surprised when the boy meekly, as he knew how,
begged to propose himself, Beetle, and McTurk as candidates; confessed
to a long-smothered interest in first-flowerings, early butterflies, and
new arrivals, and volunteered, if Mr. Hartopp saw fit, to enter on the
new life at once. Being a master, Hartopp was suspicious; but he was
also an enthusiast, and his gentle little soul had been galled by
chance-heard remarks from the three, and specially Beetle. So he was
gracious to that repentant sinner, and entered the three names in his
book.

Then, and not till then, did Stalky seek Beetle and McTurk in their
house form-room. They were stowing away books for a quiet afternoon in
the furze, which they called the “wuzzy.”

“All up,” said Stalky, serenely. “I spotted Heffy’s fairy feet round our
hut after dinner. ‘Blessing they’re so big.”

“Con-found! Did you hide our pipes?” said Beetle.

“Oh, no. Left ‘em in the middle of the hut, of course. What a blind ass
you are, Beetle! D’you think nobody thinks but yourself? Well, we can’t
use the hut any more. Hoofer will be watchin’ it.”

“‘Bother! Likewise blow!’” said McTurk thoughtfully, unpacking the
volumes with which his chest was cased. The boys carried their libraries
between their belt and their collar. “Nice job! This means we’re under
suspicion for the rest of the term.”

“Why? All that Heffy has found is a hut. He and Foxy will watch it. It’s
nothing to do with us; only we mustn’t be seen that way for a bit.”

“Yes, and where else are we to go?” said Beetle. “You chose that place,
too--an’--an’ I wanted to read this afternoon.”

Stalky sat on a desk drumming his heels on the form.

“You’re a despondin’ brute, Beetle. Sometimes I think I shall have to
drop you altogether. Did you ever know your Uncle Stalky forget you yet?
_His rebus infectis_--after I’d seen Heffy’s man-tracks marchin’
round our hut, I found little Hartopp--_destricto ense_--wavin’ a
butterfly-net. I conciliated Hartopp. ‘Told him that you’d read papers
to the Bug-hunters if he’d let you join, Beetle. ‘Told him you liked
butterflies, Turkey. Anyhow, I soothed the Hartoffles, and we’re
Bug-hunters now.”

“What’s the good of that?” said Beetle.

“Oh, Turkey, kick him!”

In the interests of science bounds were largely relaxed for the members
of the Natural History Society. They could wander, if they kept clear
of all houses, practically where they chose; Mr. Hartopp holding himself
responsible for their good conduct.

Beetle began to see this as McTurk began the kicking.

“I’m an ass, Stalky!” he said, guarding the afflicted part. “_Pax_,
Turkey. I’m an ass.”

“Don’t stop, Turkey. Isn’t your Uncle Stalky a great man?”

“Great man,” said Beetle.

“All the same bug-huntin’s a filthy business,” said McTurk. “How the
deuce does one begin?”

“This way,” said Stalky, turning to some fags’ lockers behind him. “Fags
are dabs at Natural History. Here’s young Braybrooke’s botany-case.” He
flung out a tangle of decayed roots and adjusted the slide. “‘Gives one
no end of a professional air, I think. Here’s Clay Minor’s geological
hammer. Beetle can carry that. Turkey, you’d better covet a
butterfly-net from somewhere.”

“I’m blowed if I do,” said McTurk, simply, with immense feeling.
“Beetle, give me the hammer.”

“All right. I’m not proud. Chuck us down that net on top of the lockers,
Stalky.”

“That’s all right. It’s a collapsible jamboree, too. Beastly luxurious
dogs these fags are. Built like a fishin’-rod. ‘Pon my sainted Sam,
but we look the complete Bug-hunters! Now, listen to your Uncle Stalky!
We’re goin’ along the cliffs after butterflies. Very few chaps come
there. We’re goin’ to leg it, too. You’d better leave your book behind.”

“Not much!” said Beetle, firmly. “I’m not goin’ to be done out of my fun
for a lot of filthy butterflies.”

“Then you’ll sweat horrid. You’d better carry my Jorrocks. ‘Twon’t make
you any hotter.”

They all sweated; for Stalky led them at a smart trot west away along
the cliffs under the furze-hills, crossing combe after gorzy combe. They
took no heed to flying rabbits or fluttering fritillaries, and all that
Turkey said of geology was utterly unquotable.

“Are we going to Clovelly?” he puffed at last, and they flung themselves
down on the short, springy turf between the drone of the sea below and
the light summer wind among the inland trees. They were looking into a
combe half full of old, high furze in gay bloom that ran up to a fringe
of brambles and a dense wood of mixed timber and hollies. It was as
though one-half the combe were filled with golden fire to the cliff’s
edge. The side nearest to them was open grass, and fairly bristled with
notice-boards.

“Fee-rocious old cove, this,” said Stalky, reading the nearest.
“‘_Prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law_. G. M. Dabney, Col.,
J.P.,’ an’ all the rest of it. ‘Don’t seem to me that any chap in his
senses would trespass here, does it?”

“You’ve got to prove damage ‘fore you can prosecute for anything! ‘Can’t
prosecute for trespass,” said McTurk, whose father held many acres in
Ireland. “That’s all rot!”

“Glad of that, ‘cause this looks like what we wanted. Not straight
across, Beetle, you blind lunatic! Anyone could spot us half a mile off.
This way; and furl up your beastly butterfly-net.”

Beetle disconnected the ring, thrust the net into a pocket, shut up
the handle to a two-foot stave, and slid the cane-ring round his waist.
Stalky led inland to the wood, which was, perhaps, a quarter of a mile
from the sea, and reached the fringe of the brambles.

“_Now_ we can get straight down through the furze, and never show up
at all,” said the tactician. “Beetle, go ahead and explore. Snf! Snf!
Beastly stink of fox somewhere!”

On all fours, save when he clung to his spectacles, Beetle wormed into
the gorse, and presently announced between grunts of pain that he had
found a very fair fox-track. This was well for Beetle, since Stalky
pinched him _a tergo_. Down that tunnel they crawled. It was evidently
a highway for the inhabitants of the combe; and, to their inexpressible
joy, ended, at the very edge of the cliff, in a few square feet of dry
turf walled and roofed with impenetrable gorse.

“By gum! There isn’t a single thing to do except lie down,” said Stalky,
returning a knife to his pocket. “Look here!”

He parted the tough stems before him, and it was as a window opened on
a far view of Lundy, and the deep sea sluggishly nosing the pebbles a
couple of hundred feet below. They could hear young jackdaws squawking
on the ledges, the hiss and jabber of a nest of hawks somewhere out of
sight; and, with great deliberation, Stalky spat on to the back of a
young rabbit sunning himself far down where only a cliff-rabbit could
have found foot-hold. Great gray and black gulls screamed against the
jackdaws; the heavy-scented acres of bloom round them were alive with
low-nesting birds, singing or silent as the shadow of the wheeling hawks
passed and returned; and on the naked turf across the combe rabbits
thumped and frolicked.

“Whew! What a place! Talk of natural history; this is it,” said Stalky,
filling himself a pipe. “Isn’t it scrumptious? Good old sea!” He spat
again approvingly, and was silent.

McTurk and Beetle had taken out their books and were lying on their
stomachs, chin in hand. The sea snored and gurgled; the birds, scattered
for the moment by these new animals, returned to their businesses, and
the boys read on in the rich, warm, sleepy silence.

“Hullo, here’s a keeper,” said Stalky, shutting “Handley Cross”
 cautiously, and peering through the jungle. A man with a gun appeared on
the sky-line to the east. “Confound him, he’s going to sit down.”

“He’d swear we were poachin’, too,” said Beetle. “What’s the good of
pheasants’ eggs? They’re always addled, too.”

“Might as well get up to the wood, I think,” said Stalky. “We don’t want
G. M. Dabney, Col., J.P., to be bothered about us so soon. Up the wuzzy
and keep quiet! He may have followed us, you know.”

Beetle was already far up the tunnel. They heard him gasp indescribably:
there was the crash of a heavy body leaping through the furze.

“Aie! yeou little red rascal. I see yeou!” The keeper threw the gun to
his shoulder, and fired both barrels in their direction. The pellets
dusted the dry stems round them as a big fox plunged between Stalky’s
legs, and ran over the cliff-edge.

They said nothing till they reached the wood, torn, disheveled, hot, but
unseen.

“Narrow squeak,” said Stalky. “I’ll swear some of the pellets went
through my hair.”

“Did you see him?” said Beetle. “I almost put my hand on him. Wasn’t
he a wopper! Didn’t he stink! Hullo, Turkey, what’s the matter? Are you
hit?”

McTurk’s lean face had turned pearly white; his mouth, generally half
open, was tight shut, and his eyes blazed. They had never seen him like
this save once in a sad time of civil war.

“Do you know that that was just as bad as murder?” he said, in a grating
voice, as he brushed prickles from his head.

“Well, he didn’t hit us,” said Stalky. “I think it was rather a lark.
Here, where are you going?”

“I’m going up to the house, if there is one,” said McTurk, pushing
through the hollies. “I am going to tell this Colonel Dabney.”

“Are you crazy? He’ll swear it served us jolly well right. He’ll report
us. It’ll be a public lickin’. Oh, Turkey, don’t be an ass! Think of
us!”

“You fool!” said McTurk, turning savagely. “D’you suppose I’m thinkin’
of _us_? It’s the keeper.”

“He’s cracked,” said Beetle, miserably, as they followed. Indeed, this
was a new Turkey--a haughty, angular, nose-lifted Turkey--whom they
accompanied through a shrubbery on to a lawn, where a white-whiskered
old gentleman with a cleek was alternately putting and blaspheming
vigorously.

“Are you Colonel Dabney?” McTurk began in this new creaking voice of
his.

“I--I am, and--” his eyes traveled up and down the boy--“who--what the
devil d’you want? Ye’ve been disturbing my pheasants. Don’t attempt to
deny it. Ye needn’t laugh at it.” (McTurk’s not too lovely features had
twisted themselves into a horrible sneer at the word pheasant.) “You’ve
been birds’-nesting. You needn’t hide your hat. I can see that you
belong to the College. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye do! Your name
and number at once, sir. Ye want to speak to me--Eh? You saw my
notice-boards? Must have. Don’t attempt to deny it. Ye did! Damnable, oh
damnable!”

He choked with emotion. McTurk’s heel tapped the lawn and he stuttered a
little--two sure signs that he was losing his temper. But why should he,
the offender, be angry?

“Lo-look here, sir. Do--do you shoot foxes? Because, if you don’t, your
keeper does. We’ve seen him! I do-don’t care what you call us--but it’s
an awful thing. It’s the ruin of good feelin’ among neighbors. A ma-man
ought to say once and for all how he stands about preservin’. It’s
worse than murder, because there’s no legal remedy.” McTurk was quoting
confusedly from his father, while the old gentleman made noises in his
throat.

“Do you know who I am?” he gurgled at last; Stalky and Beetle quaking.

“No, sorr, nor do I care if ye belonged to the Castle itself. Answer me
now, as one gentleman to another. Do ye shoot foxes or do ye not?”

And four years before Stalky and Beetle had carefully kicked McTurk out
of his Irish dialect! Assuredly he had gone mad or taken a sunstroke,
and as assuredly he would be slain--once by the old gentleman and once
by the Head. A public licking for the three was the least they could
expect. Yet--if their eyes and ears were to be trusted--the old
gentleman had collapsed. It might be a lull before the storm, but--

“I do not.” He was still gurgling.

“Then you must sack your keeper. He’s not fit to live in the same county
with a God-fearin’ fox. An’ a vixen, too--at this time o’ year!”

“Did ye come up on purpose to tell me this?”

“Of course I did, ye silly man,” with a stamp of the foot. “Would you
not have done as much for me if you’d seen that thing happen on my land,
now?”

Forgotten--forgotten was the College and the decency due to elders!
McTurk was treading again the barren purple mountains of the rainy
West coast, where in his holidays he was viceroy of four thousand naked
acres, only son of a three-hundred-year-old house, lord of a crazy
fishing-boat, and the idol of his father’s shiftless tenantry. It was
the landed man speaking to his equal--deep calling to deep--and the old
gentleman acknowledged the cry.

“I apologize,” said he. “I apologize unreservedly--to you, and to the
Old Country. Now, will you be good enough to tell me your story?”

“We were in your combe,” McTurk began, and he told his tale alternately
as a schoolboy and, when the iniquity of the thing overcame him, as an
indignant squire; concluding: “So you see he must be in the habit of
it. I--we---one never wants to accuse a neighbor’s man; but I took the
liberty in this case--”

“I see. Quite so. For a reason ye had. Infamous---oh, infamous!”

The two had fallen into step beside each other on the lawn, and Colonel
Dabney was talking as one man to another. “This comes of promoting a
fisherman--a fisherman--from his lobster-pots. It’s enough to ruin the
reputation of an archangel. Don’t attempt to deny it. It is! Your father
has brought you up well. He has. I’d much like the pleasure of his
acquaintance. Very much, indeed. And these young gentlemen? English
they are. Don’t attempt to deny it. They came up with you, too?
Extraordinary! Extraordinary, now! In the present state of education I
shouldn’t have thought any three boys would be well enough grounded.
But out of the mouths of--No--no! Not that by any odds. Don’t attempt to
deny it. Ye’re not! Sherry always catches me under the liver, but--beer,
now? Eh? What d’you say to beer, and something to eat? It’s long since
I was a boy--abominable nuisances; but exceptions prove the rule. And a
vixen, too!” They were fed on the terrace by a gray-haired housekeeper.
Stalky and Beetle merely ate, but McTurk with bright eyes continued a
free and lofty discourse; and ever the old gentleman treated him as a
brother.

“My dear man, of course ye can come again. Did I not say exceptions
prove the rule? The lower combe? Man, dear, anywhere ye please, so long
as you do not disturb my pheasants. The two are not incompatible. Don’t
attempt to deny it. They’re not! I’ll never allow another gun, though.
Come and go as ye please. I’ll not see you, and ye needn’t see me. Ye’ve
been well brought up. Another glass of beer, now? I tell you a fisherman
he was and a fisherman he shall be to-night again. He shall! Wish
I could drown him. I’ll convoy you to the Lodge. My people are not
precisely--ah--broke to boy, but they’ll know you again.”

He dismissed them with many compliments by the high Lodge-gate in the
split-oak park palings and they stood still; even Stalky, who had played
second, not to say a dumb, fiddle, regarding McTurk as one from another
world. The two glasses of strong home-brewed had brought a melancholy
upon the boy, for, slowly strolling with his hands in his pockets, he
crooned:--“Oh, Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?”

Under other circumstances Stalky and Beetle would have fallen upon him,
for that song was barred utterly--anathema--the sin of witchcraft. But
seeing what he had wrought, they danced round him in silence, waiting
till it pleased him to touch earth.

The tea-bell rang when they were still half a mile from College. McTurk
shivered and came out of dreams. The glory of his holiday estate had
left him. He was a Colleger of the College, speaking English once more.

“Turkey, it was immense!” said Stalky, generously. “I didn’t know you
had it in you. You’ve got us a hut for the rest of the term, where
we simply _can’t_ be collared. Fids! Fids! Oh, Fids! I gloat! Hear me
gloat!”

They spun wildly on their heels, jodeling after the accepted manner of
a “gloat,” which is not unremotely allied to the primitive man’s song of
triumph, and dropped down the hill by the path from the gasometer just
in time to meet their house-master, who had spent the afternoon watching
their abandoned hut in the “wuzzy.”

Unluckily, all Mr. Prout’s imagination leaned to the darker side of
life, and he looked on those young-eyed cherubims most sourly. Boys that
he understood attended house-matches and could be accounted for at
any moment. But he had heard McTurk openly deride cricket--even
house-matches; Beetle’s views on the honor of the house he knew were
incendiary; and he could never tell when the soft and smiling Stalky was
laughing at him. Consequently--since human nature is what it is--those
boys had been doing wrong somewhere. He hoped it was nothing very
serious, but...

“_Ti-ra-ra-la-i-tu_! I gloat! Hear me!” Stalky, still on his heels,
whirled like a dancing dervish to the dining-hall.

“_Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu_! I gloat! Hear me!” Beetle spun behind him with
outstretched arms.

“_Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu_! I gloat! Hear me!” McTurk’s voice cracked.

Now was there or was there not a distinct flavor of beer as they shot
past Mr. Prout?

He was unlucky in that his conscience as a house-master impelled him to
consult his associates. Had he taken his pipe and his troubles to
little Hartopp’s rooms he would, perhaps, have been saved confusion, for
Hartopp believed in boys, and knew something about them. His fate led
him to King, a fellow house-master, no friend of his, but a zealous
hater of Stalky & Co.

“Ah-haa!” said King, rubbing his hands when the tale was told. “Curious!
Now _my_ house never dream of doing these things.”

“But you see I’ve no proof, exactly.”

“Proof? With the egregious Beetle! As if one wanted it! I suppose it
is not impossible for the Sergeant to supply it? Foxy is considered
at least a match for any evasive boy in my house. Of course they were
smoking and drinking somewhere. That type of boy always does. They think
it manly.”

“But they’ve no following in the school, and they are distinctly--er
brutal to their juniors,” said Prout, who had from a distance seen
Beetle return, with interest, his butterfly-net to a tearful fag.

“Ah! They consider themselves superior to ordinary delights.
Self-sufficient little animals! There’s something in McTurk’s Hibernian
sneer that would make me a little annoyed. And they are so careful
to avoid all overt acts, too. It’s sheer calculated insolence. I am
strongly opposed, as you know, to interfering with another man’s house;
but they need a lesson, Prout. They need a sharp lesson, if only to
bring down their over-weening self-conceit. Were I you, I should devote
myself for a week to their little performances. Boys of that order--and
I may flatter myself, but I think I know boys--don’t join the
Bug-hunters for love. Tell the Sergeant to keep his eye open; and, of
course, in my peregrinations I may casually keep mine open, too.”

“_Ti-ra-la-la-i-tu_! I gloat! Hear me!” far down the corridor.

“Disgusting!” said King. “Where do they pick up these obscene noises?
One sharp lesson is what they want.”

The boys did not concern themselves with lessons for the next few days.
They had all Colonel Dabney’s estate to play with, and they explored it
with the stealth of Red Indians and the accuracy of burglars. They could
enter either by the Lodge-gates on the upper road--they were careful to
ingratiate themselves with the Lodge-keeper and his wife--drop down into
the combe, and return along the cliffs; or they could begin at the combe
and climb up into the road.

They were careful not to cross the Colonel’s path--he had served his
turn, and they would not out-wear their welcome--nor did they show up on
the sky-line when they could move in cover. The shelter of the gorze
by the cliff-edge was their chosen retreat. Beetle christened it the
Pleasant Isle of Aves, for the peace and the shelter of it; and here,
the pipes and tobacco once cache’d in a convenient ledge an arm’s length
down the cliff, their position was legally unassailable.

For, observe, Colonel Dabney had not invited them to enter his house.
Therefore, they did not need to ask specific leave to go visiting; and
school rules were strict on that point. He had merely thrown open his
grounds to them; and, since they were lawful Bug-hunters, their extended
bounds ran up to his notice-boards in the combe and his Lodge-gates on
the hill.

They were amazed at their own virtue.

“And even if it wasn’t,” said Stalky, flat on his back, staring into the
blue. “Even suppose we were miles out of bounds, no one could get at us
through this wuzzy, unless he knew the tunnel. Isn’t this better than
lyin’ up just behind the Coll.--in a blue funk every time we had a
smoke? Isn’t your Uncle Stalky--?”

“No,” said Beetle--he was stretched at the edge of the cliff spitting
thoughtfully. “We’ve got to thank Turkey for this. Turkey is the Great
Man. Turkey, dear, you’re distressing Heffles.”

“Gloomy old ass!” said McTurk, deep in a book.

“They’ve got us under suspicion,” said Stalky. “Hoophats _is_ so
suspicious somehow; and Foxy always makes every stalk he does a sort
of--sort of--”

“Scalp,” said Beetle. “Foxy’s a giddy Chingangook.”

“Poor Foxy,” said Stalky. “He’s goin’ to catch us one of these days.
‘Said to me in the Gym last night, ‘I’ve got my eye on you, Mister
Corkran. I’m only warning you for your good.’ Then I said: ‘Well, you
jolly well take it off again, or you’ll get into trouble. I’m only
warnin’ you for your good.’ Foxy was wrath.”

“Yes, but it’s only fair sport for Foxy,” said Beetle. “It’s Hefflelinga
that has the evil mind. ‘Shouldn’t wonder if he thought we got tight.”

“I never got squiffy but once--that was in the holidays,” said Stalky,
reflectively; “an’ it made me horrid sick. ‘Pon my sacred Sam, though,
it’s enough to drive a man to drink, havin’ an animal like Hoof for
house-master.”

“If we attended the matches an’ yelled, ‘Well hit, sir,’ an’ stood on
one leg an’ grinned every time Heffy said, ‘So ho, my sons. Is it thus?’
an’ said, ‘Yes, sir,’ an’ ‘No, sir,’ an’ ‘O, sir,’ an’ ‘Please, sir,’
like a lot o’ filthy fa-ags, Heffy ‘ud think no end of us,” said McTurk
with a sneer.

“Too late to begin that.”

“It’s all right. The Hefflelinga means well. _But_ he is an ass. _And_
we show him that we think he’s an ass. An’ _so_ Heffy don’t love us.
‘Told me last night after prayers that he was _in loco parentis_,”
 Beetle grunted.

“The deuce he did!” cried Stalky. “That means he’s maturin’ something
unusual dam’ mean. Last time he told me that he gave me three hundred
lines for dancin’ the cachuca in Number Ten dormitory. _Loco parentis_,
by gum! But what’s the odds as long as you’re ‘appy? _We’re_ all right.”

They were, and their very rightness puzzled Prout, King, and the
Sergeant. Boys with bad consciences show it. They slink out past the
Fives Court in haste, and smile nervously when questioned. They return,
disordered, in bare time to save a call-over. They nod and wink and
giggle one to the other, scattering at the approach of a master. But
Stalky and his allies had long out-lived these manifestations of youth.
They strolled forth unconcernedly, and returned in excellent shape