“Bedad, ye’re right,” said O’Hara. “One of these nights we’ll take a night off from boxing, and go and watch.”
“Right,” said Moriarty. “Are ye ready to go on?”
“Yes. I’m going to practise that left swing at the body this round. The one Fitzsimmons does.” And they “put ’em up” once more.
X
Being a Chapter of Accidents
On the evening following O’Hara’s adventure in the vaults, Barry and McTodd were in their study, getting out the tea-things. Most Wrykinians brewed in the winter and Easter terms, when the days were short and lockup early. In the summer term there were other things to do—nets, which lasted till a quarter to seven (when lockup was), and the baths—and brewing practically ceased. But just now it was at its height, and every evening, at a quarter past five, there might be heard in the houses the sizzling of the succulent sausage and other rare delicacies. As a rule, one or two studies would club together to brew, instead of preparing solitary banquets. This was found both more convivial and more economical. At Seymour’s, studies numbers five, six, and seven had always combined from time immemorial, and Barry, on obtaining study six, had carried on the tradition. In study five were Drummond and his friend De Bertini. In study seven, which was a smaller room and only capable of holding one person with any comfort, one James Rupert Leather-Twigg (that was his singular name, as Mr. Gilbert has it) had taken up his abode. The name of Leather-Twigg having proved, at an early date in his career, too great a mouthful for Wrykyn, he was known to his friends and acquaintances by the euphonious title of Shoeblossom. The charm about the genial Shoeblossom was that you could never tell what he was going to do next. All that you could rely on with any certainty was that it would be something which would have been better left undone.
It was just five o’clock when Barry and McTodd started to get things ready. They were not high enough up in the school to have fags, so that they had to do this for themselves.
Barry was still in football clothes. He had been out running and passing with the first fifteen. McTodd, whose idea of exercise was winding up a watch, had been spending his time since school ceased in the study with a book. He was in his ordinary clothes. It was therefore fortunate that, when he upset the kettle (he nearly always did at some period of the evening’s business), the contents spread themselves over Barry, and not over himself. Football clothes will stand any amount of water, whereas McTodd’s “Youth’s winter suiting at forty-two shillings and sixpence” might have been injured. Barry, however, did not look upon the episode in this philosophical light. He spoke to him eloquently for a while, and then sent him downstairs to fetch more water. While he was away, Drummond and De Bertini came in.
“Hullo,” said Drummond, “tea ready?”
“Not much,” replied Barry, bitterly, “not likely to be, either, at this rate. We’d just got the kettle going when that ass McTodd plunged against the table and upset the lot over my bags. Lucky the beastly stuff wasn’t boiling. I’m soaked.”
“While we wait—the sausages—Yes?—a good idea—McTodd, he is downstairs—but to wait? No, no. Let us. Shall we? Is it not so? Yes?” observed Bertie, lucidly.
“Now construe,” said Barry, looking at the linguist with a bewildered expression. It was a source of no little inconvenience to his friends that De Bertini was so very fixed in his determination to speak English. He was a trier all the way, was De Bertini. You rarely caught him helping out his remarks with the language of his native land. It was English or nothing with him. To most of his circle it might as well have been Zulu.
Drummond, either through natural genius or because he spent more time with him, was generally able to act as interpreter. Occasionally there would come a linguistic effort by which even he freely confessed himself baffled, and then they would pass on unsatisfied. But, as a rule, he was equal to the emergency. He was so now.
“What Bertie means,” he explained, “is that it’s no good us waiting for McTodd to come back. He never could fill a kettle in less than ten minutes, and even then he’s certain to spill it coming upstairs and have to go back again. Let’s get on with the sausages.”
The pan had just been placed on the fire when McTodd returned with the water. He tripped over the mat as he entered, and spilt about half a pint into one of his football boots, which stood inside the door, but the accident was comparatively trivial, and excited no remark.
“I wonder where that slacker Shoeblossom has got to,” said Barry. “He never turns up in time to do any work. He seems to regard himself as a beastly guest. I wish we could finish the sausages before he comes. It would be a sell for him.”
“Not much chance of that,” said Drummond, who was kneeling before the fire and keeping an excited eye on the spluttering pan, “you see. He’ll come just as we’ve finished cooking them. I believe the man waits outside with his ear to the keyhole. Hullo! Stand by with the plate. They’ll be done in half a jiffy.”
Just as the last sausage was deposited in safety on the plate, the door opened, and Shoeblossom, looking as if he had not brushed his hair since early childhood, sidled in with an attempt at an easy nonchalance which was rendered quite impossible by the hopeless state of his conscience.
“Ah,” he said, “brewing, I see. Can I be
