'Shut up,' yelled Mr Clyde-Browne, conscious that half the neighbours in Pinetree Lane were about to be privy to what went on in Gloddie's, 'I don't want to know.'
'I can't see why you asked then,' bawled Peregrine, still evidently under the impression that the lawnmower was purely incidental to the discussion. 'You asked if there was a lot of wanking and I was telling you.'
Mr Clyde-Browne dragged lividly at the mower's starting cord.
'Anyway, Gloddie's don't if that's what you're worried about,' continued Peregrine, oblivious of his father's suffering. 'And when Matron thought I'd been shafted, I told her '
Mr Clyde-Browne wrenched the lawnmower into life again and drowned the rest of the explanation. It was only later in the garage, and after he'd warned his son that if he raised his voice above a whisper, he'd live to regret it, that Peregrine finally established his innocence. He did so in language that appalled his father.
'Where the hell did you learn the term 'brown-hatter'?' he demanded.
'I don't know. Everyone uses it about Slymne's.'
'I don't use it,' said Mr Clyde-Browne. 'And what's slime got to do with it. No, don't tell me, I can guess.'
'Slymne's a shit,' said Peregrine. Mr Clyde-Browne turned the statement over in his mind and found it grammatically puzzling and distinctly crude.
'I should have thought it was bound to be,' he said finally, 'though why you have to reverse the order of things and use the indefinite article into the bargain, beats me.'
Peregrine looked bewildered. 'Well, all the other chaps think Slimey's wet and he's sucking up to the Head. He wears a bow tie.'
'Who does?'
'Mr Slymne.'
'Mr Slymne? Who the hell is Mr Slymne?'
'He's the geography master and there's always been a feud between his house and Gloddie's ever since anyone can remember.'
'I see,' said Mr Clyde-Browne vaguely. 'Anyway, I don't want you to use foul language in front of your mother. I'm not paying good money to send you to a school like Groxbourne for the privilege of having you come home swearing like a trooper.'
But at least Mr Clyde-Browne was satisfied that Mr Glodstone's extraordinary enthusiasm for his son was not obviously based on sex, though what cause it had he couldn't imagine. Peregrine appeared to be as obtuse as ever and as unlikely to fulfil the Clyde-Brownes' hopes. But he seemed to be happy and rudely healthy. Even his mother was impressed by his eagerness to go back to school at the end of the holidays, and began to revise her earlier opinion of Groxbourne.
'Things must have changed with the new headmaster,' she said, and by the same process which saw no bad in her acquaintances because she knew them, she now conferred some distinction on Groxbourne because Peregrine went there. Even Mr Clyde-Browne was relatively satisfied. As he had predicted, Peregrine stayed on in the summer holidays and allowed his parents to have an unencumbered holiday by going on Major Fetherington's Fieldcraft and Survival Course in Wales. And at the end of each term, Peregrine's report suggested that he was doing very well. Only in Geography was he found to be wanting, and Peregrine blamed that on Mr Slymne. 'He's got it in for everyone in Gloddie's,' he told his father, 'you can ask anyone.'
'I don't need to. If you will insist on calling the wretched man Slimey, you deserve what you get. Anyway, I can't see how you can be doing so well in class and fail O-levels at the same time.'
'Gloddie says O-levels don't matter. It's what you do afterwards.'
'Then Mr Glodstone's notion of reality must be sadly wanting,' said Mr Clyde-Browne. 'Without qualifications you won't do anything afterwards.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Peregrine, 'I'm in the First Eleven and the First Fifteen and Gloddie
