The Willoughby Captains Part 3

Little he knew the joy his words carried to two small hearts in his audience.

"Jolly good luck that!" said Parson, as he strolled out into the pa.s.sage arm-in-arm with his friend. "Now if I can only get those beastly verbs done before Coates asks for them! I say, Telson, do you know the dodge for sticking three nibs on one pen and writing three lines all at one time?"

"Tried it once," said Telson, "but it didn't pay. It took longer to keep sticking them in when they fell out, and measuring them to write on the lines, than to write the thing twice over the ordinary way. I'll write out part, old man."

"Thanks, Telson, you're an awful brick. I suppose Riddell wouldn't think it wicked of you to write another fellow's impot, would he?"

"I half fancy he would; but I won't tell him. Hullo! though, here comes Coates."

A monitor wearing his "mortar-board" approached.

"Where's your imposition, Parson?" he asked.

"I'm awfully sorry," said Parson, "but it's not quite done yet, Coates."

"How much is done?" demanded Coates.

"Not any yet," said Parson, with some confusion. "I was just going to begin. Wasn't I, Telson?"

"Won't do," said Coates; "you were up the river this morning, I saw you.

If you can go up the river you can do your impositions. Better come with me to the captain."

Coming with a monitor to the captain meant something unpleasant. The discipline of Willoughby, particularly in outside matters, was left almost entirely in the hands of the monitors, who with the captain, their head, were responsible as a body to the head master for the order of the school. It was very rarely that a case had to go beyond the monitors, whose authority was usually sufficient to enable them to deal summarily with all ordinary offenders.

It was by no means the first time that Parson, who was reputed by almost every one but himself and Telson to be an incorrigible scamp, had been haled away to this awful tribunal, and he was half regretting that he had not met his fate over the Caesar after all, and so escaped his present position, when another monitor appeared down the pa.s.sage and met them. It was Ashley.

"Hullo! Coates," said he, "I wish you'd come to my study and help me choose half a dozen trout-flies, there's a good fellow. I've had a book up from the town, and I don't know which are the best to use."

"All serene," said Coates, "I'll be there directly. I'm just going to take this youngster to the captain."

"Who is the captain?" said Ashley. "Wyndham's gone, and no one's been named yet that I know of. I suppose it's Bloomfield."

"Eh? I never thought of that. No, I expect it'll be a schoolhouse fellow. Always is, isn't it. Parson, you can go. Bring me twelve French verbs written out to my study before chapel to-morrow. Come on, Ashley."

And Parson departed, consoled in spirit, to announce to Telson and the lower school generally that Willoughby was at present without a captain.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE VACANT CAPTAINCY.

Who was to be the new captain of Willoughby? This was a question it had occurred to only a very few to ask until Wyndham had finally quitted the school. Fellows had grown so used to the old order of things, which had continued now for two years, that the possibility of their bowing to any other chief than "Old Wynd" had scarcely crossed their minds. But the question being once asked, it became very interesting indeed.

The captains of Willoughby had been by long tradition what is known as "all-round men." There was something in the air of the place that seemed specially favourable to the development of muscle and cla.s.sical proficiency at the same time, and the consequence was that the last three heads of the school had combined in one person the senior cla.s.sic and the captains of the clubs. Wyndham had been the best of these; indeed he was as much ahead of his fellows in the cla.s.sical school as he was in the cricket-field and on the river, which was saying not a little. His predecessors had both also been head boys in cla.s.sics; and although neither of them actually the best men of their time in athletics, they had been sufficiently near the best to ent.i.tle them to the place of honour, which made the Willoughby captain supreme, not only in school, but out of it. So that in the memory of the present "generation"--a school generation being reckoned as five years--the Willoughby captain had always been c.o.c.k of the school in every sense in which such a distinction was possible.

But now all of a sudden the school woke up to the fact that this delightful state of things was not everlasting. Wyndham had left and his mantle had fallen from him in two pieces.

The new head cla.s.sic was Riddell, a comparatively unknown boy in the school, who had come there a couple of years ago from a private school, and about whom the most that was known was that he was physically weak and timid, rarely taking part in any athletic exercises, having very few chums, interfering very little with anybody else, and reputed "pi."--as the more irreverent among the Willoughbites were wont to stigmatise any fellow who made a profession of goodness. Such was the boy on whom, according to strict rule, the captaincy of Willoughby would devolve, and it need hardly be said that the discovery spread consternation wherever it travelled.

Among the seniors the idea was hardly taken seriously.

"The doctor would never be so ridiculous," said Ashley to Coates, as they talked the matter over in the study of the former. "We might as well shut up the school."

"The worst of it is, I don't see how he can help it," replied Coates.

"Help it! Of course he can help it if he likes. There's no written law that head cla.s.sics are to be captains, if they can't hold a bat or run a hundred yards, is there?"

"I don't suppose there is. But who else is there?"

"Why, Bloomfield, of course. He's just the fellow for it, and the fellows all look up to him."

"But Bloomfield's low down in the sixth," said Coates.

"What's that to do with it? Felton was a m.u.f.f at rowing, but he was made captain of the boats all the same while he was c.o.c.k of the school."

At this point another monitor entered.

"Ah, Tipper," said Ashley, "what do you think Coates here is saying? He says Riddell is to be the new captain."

Tipper burst into a loud laugh.

"That would be a joke! Think of Riddell stroking the school eight at Henley, eh! or kicking off for us against Rockshire! I suppose Coates thinks because Riddell's a schoolhouse boy he's bound to be the man.

Never fear. You'll see Parrett's come to the front at last, my boy!"

"Why, are _you_ to be the new captain?" asked Coates, with a slight sneer.

Tipper was not pleased with this little piece of sarcasm. He was a good cricketer and a fine runner, but in school everybody knew him to be as poor a scholar as a fellow could be to be in the sixth at all.

"I dare say even I would be as good as any schoolhouse fellow you could pick out," said he. "But if you want to know, Bloomfield's the man."

"Just what I was saying," said Ashley. "But Coates says he's not far enough up in the school."

"All bosh," said Tipper. "What difference does it make if a fellow's first or twentieth in the school, as long as he's c.o.c.k of everything outside! I don't see how the doctor can hesitate a moment between the two."

This was the conclusion come to at almost all the conclaves which met together during the day to discuss the burning question. It was the conclusion moreover to which Bloomfield himself came as he talked the matter over with a few of his friends after third school.

"You see," said he, "it's not that I care about the thing for its own sake. It would be a precious grind, I know, to have to be responsible for everything that goes on, and to have to lick all the kids that want a hiding. But for all that, I'd sooner do it than let the school run down."

"What I hope," said some one, "is that even if Paddy doesn't see it himself, Riddell will, and will have the sense to back out of it. I fancy he wouldn't be sorry."

"Not he," said Bloomfield. "I heard him say once he pitied Wyndham all the bother he had, especially when he was wanting to stew for the exams."

"Has any one seen Riddell lately?" asked Game. "It wouldn't be a bad thing for some of us to see him, and put it to him, that the school would go to the dogs to a dead certainty if he was captain."

"Rather a blunt way of putting it," said Porter, laughing. "I'd break it to him rather more gently than that."

"Well, you know what I mean," replied Game, who was of the downright order.