The Human Boy and the War Part 23

"You might say good conduct," I suggested; but Protheroe min. scorned the thought.

"That would give away the whole show at once," he said. "Because even my mother wouldn't be deceived. It's no good taking back a prize for good conduct when the report will be sure to read as usual--'No attempt at any improvement,' which is how it always goes."

Everything I suggested, Protheroe scoffed at in the same way, so I could see the prize would have to be for something not mentioned at all in the school report.

Of course, you don't get book prizes for cricket, or footer, or running, which--especially the latter--were the only things that Protheroe min.

could have hoped honestly to get a prize for. But I stuck to the problem, and had a very happy idea three nights before the end of the term. I then advised Protheroe to say the prize was for "calisthenics."

There are no prizes for calisthenics at Merivale; but it sounded rather a likely subject, especially as he was a dab at it. And, anyway, he thought it would satisfy his mother and be all right.

So that was settled, and it only remained for Mayne to get his lawful prizes and hand over the least important to Protheroe min.

It all went exceedingly well--at the start--and young Mayne got the prizes and gave Protheroe the second, which was for literature.

The thing was composed entirely of poems--Longfellow, or Southey, or some such blighter--and Protheroe said that his mother would fairly revel to think that he had won it. He packed it in his box after "breaking up," and we exchanged our agreements; and it came out, when all was over, that young Mayne was to have two pounds out of Protheroe's five, and I was to have ten bob from Mayne and a pound from Protheroe--thirty shillings in all; and Protheroe would have the prize and two pounds, not to mention other pickings, which would doubtless be given to him by his proud and grateful mother.

You might have thought that nothing could go wrong with a sound financial scheme of that sort. I put any amount of time and thought into the transaction, and as it was my first introduction into the world of business, so to speak, and I stood to net a clear thirty shillings, naturally I left no stone unturned, as they say, to make it a brilliant and successful affair.

And yet it all went to utter and hopeless smash, though it was no fault of mine.

And you certainly couldn't blame Protheroe min. or Mayne either. In fact, Protheroe must have carried it off very well when he got home, and the calisthenics went down all right; and Mayne, when his people asked how it was that he hadn't got more than one prize, was ingenious enough to say that he'd suffered from hay fever all the term and been too off colour to make his usual haul.

So everything would have been perfection but for the idiotic and footling behaviour of Protheroe min.'s mother.

This excitable and weak-minded woman was not content with just quietly taking the prize and putting it in a gla.s.s case with the prizes won in the past by Protheroe's brothers. She must go fluttering about telling his wretched relations what he'd done; and, as if that was not enough, she got altogether above herself and wrote to Dr. Dunston about it. She said how glad and happy it had made her, and that success in the gymnasium was something to begin with, and that she hoped and prayed that it would lead to better things, and that they would live to be proud of Protheroe minimus yet, and such-like truck!

Well, the result was a knock-down blow to us all, as you may imagine, and the Doctor showed himself both wily and beastly, as usual. For he merely asked Protheroe's mother to send back the prize at the beginning of the term, as he fancied there might have been some mistake; but he begged her not to mention the matter to Protheroe minimus.

So when Protheroe and Mayne and myself all arrived again for the arduous toil of the winter term, and Mayne and I were eager for the financial disimburs.e.m.e.nts to begin, we heard the shattering news that, at the last moment, Protheroe hadn't got his fiver.

It was to have been given to him on the day that he came back to school; but instead his mother had merely told him that she feared there was a little mistake somewhere, and that she couldn't give him his hard-earned cash till Dr. Dunston had cleared the matter up.

Needless to say that Dunston did clear it up with all the brutality of which he was capable.

As for myself, when the crash came, I hoped it would happen to me as it often does to professional financiers in real life, and that I should escape, as it were. Not, of course, that I had done anything that in fairness made it necessary for me to escape, because to take advantage of supply and demand is a natural law of self-preservation, and everybody does it as a matter of course, not only financiers.

But, much to my annoyance, the common-sense view of the thing was not taken, and I found myself "in the cart," as they say, with young Mayne and Protheroe minimus.

The Doctor, on examining Protheroe's prize for calisthenics, instantly perceived that it was in reality young Mayne's prize for literature.

But evidently anything like strategy of this kind was very distasteful to the Doctor. In fact, he took a prejudiced view from the first, and as young Mayne was only eleven and Protheroe min. merely ten and a half, it instantly jumped to Dunston's hateful and suspicious mind that somebody must have helped them in what he called a "nefarious project."

And, by dint of some very unmanly cross-questioning, he got my name out of Mayne.

I never blamed Mayne; in fact, I quite believed him when he swore that it only slipped out under the treacherous questions of the Doctor; but the result was, of course, unsatisfactory in every way for me.

I was immediately sent for, and had no course open to me but to explain the whole nature of financial operations to Dr. Dunston, and try to make him see that I had simply fallen in with the iron laws of supply and demand.

Needless to say, I failed, for he was in one of his fiery and snorting conditions and above all appeal to reason.

"It was an ordinary sort of transaction, sir," I said, "and I don't see that anybody was hurt by it. In fact, everybody was pleased, including Mrs. Protheroe."

This made him simply foam at the mouth.

I had never been what you may call a great success with him, and now to hear sound business views from one still at the early age of sixteen, fairly shook him up.

He ordered me to go back to my cla.s.s, and when I had gone, he flogged young Mayne and Protheroe minimus. He then forgave them and told them to go and sin no more; and the same day, doubtless after the old fool had cooled down a bit, he wrote to my father and put the case before him--though not quite fairly--and said that, apparently, I had no moral sense, and a lot of other insulting and vulgar things. In conclusion, he asked my father to remove me, that I might find another sphere for my activities.

And my father did.

He never took my view of the matter exactly; but he certainly did not take Dr. Dunston's view either. He seemed to be more amused than anything, and was by no means in such a wax with Dr. Dunston as I should have expected.

He said that the scholastic point of view was rather stuffy and lacked humour; and then he explained that I had certainly not acted quite on the straight, but had been a "deceitful and cunning little bounder."

I was a good deal hurt at this view, and when he found a billet for me in the firm of Messrs. Martin & Moss, Stock Brokers, I felt very glad indeed to go into it and shake off the dust of school from my feet, as they say.

It is a good and a busy firm, and I have been here a fortnight now. Ten days ago, happening to pa.s.s Mr. Martin's door, and catching my name, I naturally stood and listened and heard an old clerk tell Mr. Martin that I was taking to the work like a duck takes to water.

I am writing this account of the business at Merivale on sheets of the best correspondence paper of Messrs. Martin & Moss!

They would not like it if they knew.

But they won't know.

THE END