But there was one more powerful than Conscience—Mr. Seymour. He had marked the constant lateness of our hero, and disapproved of it.
Thus it happened that Chapple, having finished an excellent breakfast one morning some twenty minutes after everybody else, was informed as he sat in the junior day-room trying, with the help of an illustrated article in a boys’ paper, to construct a handy model steam engine out of a reel of cotton and an old notebook—for his was in many ways a giant brain—that Mr. Seymour would like to have a friendly chat with him in his study. Laying aside his handy model steam engine, he went off to the housemaster’s study.
“You were late for breakfast today,” said Mr. Seymour, in the horrid, abrupt way housemasters have.
“Why, yes, sir,” said Chapple, pleasantly.
“And the day before.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the day before that.”
Chapple did not deny it. He stood on one foot and smiled a propitiating smile. So far Mr. Seymour was entitled to demand a cigar or coconut every time.
The housemaster walked to the window, looked out, returned to the mantelpiece, and shifted the position of a china vase two and a quarter inches to the left. Chapple, by way of spirited repartee, stood on the other leg and curled the disengaged foot round his ankle. The conversation was getting quite intellectual.
“You will write out—”
“Sir, please, sir—” interrupted Chapple in an “I-represent-the defendant-m’lud” tone of voice.
“Well?”
“It’s awfully hard to hear the bell from where I sleep, sir.”
Owing to the increased numbers of the house this term Chapple had been removed from his dormitory proper to a small room some distance away.
“Nonsense. The bell can be heard perfectly well all over the house.”
There was reason in what he said. Herbert, who woke the house of a morning, did so by ringing a bell. It was a big bell, and he enjoyed ringing it. Few sleepers, however sound, could dream on peacefully through Herbert’s morning solo. After five seconds of it they would turn over uneasily. After seven they would sit up. At the end of the first quarter of a minute they would be out of bed, and you would be wondering where they picked up such expressions.
Chapple murmured wordlessly in reply. He realised that his defence was a thin one. Mr. Seymour followed up his advantage.
“You will write a hundred lines of Virgil,” he said, “and if you are late again tomorrow I shall double them.”
Chapple retired.
This, he felt, was a crisis. He had been pursuing his career of unpunctuality so long that he had never quite realised that a time might come when the authorities would drop on him. For a moment he felt that it was impossible, that he could not meet Mr. Seymour’s wishes in the matter; but the bulldog pluck of the true Englishman caused him to reconsider this. He would at least have a dash at it.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” said his friend, Brodie, when consulted on the point over a quiet pot of tea that afternoon. “You ought to sleep without so many things on the bed. How many blankets do you use, for instance?”
“I don’t know,” said Chapple. “As many as they shove on.”
It had never occurred to him to reckon up the amount of his bedclothes before retiring to rest.
“Well, you take my tip,” said Brodie, “and only sleep with one on. Then the cold’ll wake you in the morning, and you’ll get up because it’ll be more comfortable than staying in bed.”
This scientific plan might have worked. In fact, to a certain extent it did work. It woke Chapple in the morning, as Brodie had predicted; but it woke him at the wrong hour. It is no good springing out of bed when there are still three hours to breakfast. When Chapple woke at five the next morning, after a series of dreams, the scenes of which were laid mainly in the Arctic regions, he first sneezed, then he piled upon the bed everything he could find, including his boots, and then went to sleep again. The genial warmth oozed through his form, and continued to ooze until he woke once more, this time at eight-fifteen. Breakfast being at eight, it occurred to him that his position with Mr. Seymour was not improved. While he was devoting a few moments’ profound meditation to this point the genial warmth got in its fell work once again. When he next woke, the bell was ringing for school. He lowered the world’s record for rapid dressing, and was just in time to accompany the tail of the procession into the form-room.
“You were late again this morning,” said Mr. Seymour, after dinner.
“Yes, sir. I overslebbed myselb, sir,” replied Chapple, who was suffering from a cold in the head.
“Two hundred lines.”
“Yes, sir.”
Things had now become serious. It was no good going to Brodie again for counsel. Brodie had done for himself, proved
