The acute interest of the junior day-room, always fond of a break in the monotony of things, induced Burge to go further into the matter.
"What the dickens are you going with my book? Pass it back!"
"Oh, is this yours?" said Thomas. "Here you are."
He walked towards him, carrying the book. At two yards range he fired it in. It hit Burge with some force in the waistcoat, and there was a pause while he collected his wind.
Then the thing may be said to have begun.
Yes, said Burge, interrogated on the point five minutes later, he _had_ had enough.
"Good," said Thomas pleasantly. "Want a handkerchief?"
That evening he wrote to his mother and, thanking her for kind inquiries, stated that he was not being bullied. He added, also in answer to inquiries, that he had not been tossed in a blanket, and that--so far--no Hulking Senior (with scowl) had let him down from the dormitory window after midnight by a sheet, in order that he might procure gin from the local public-house. As far as he could gather, the seniors were mostly teetotallers. Yes, he had seen Spencer several times. He did not add that he had seen him from a distance.
"I'm so glad I asked Mrs. Davy to get her nephew to look after Tom," said Mrs. Shearne, concluding the reading of the epistle at breakfast. "It makes such a difference to a new boy having somebody to protect him at first."
"Only drawback is," said his eldest brother gloomily--"won't get cheek knocked out of him. Tom's kid wh'ought get'sheadsmacked reg'ly. Be no holding him."
And he helped himself to marmalade, of which delicacy his mouth was full, with a sort of magnificent despondency.
By the end of the first fortnight of his school career, Thomas Beauchamp Algernon had overcome all the little ruggednesses which relieve the path of the new boy from monotony. He had been taken in by a primaeval "sell" which the junior day-room invariably sprang on the new-comer. But as he had sat on the head of the engineer of the same for the space of ten minutes, despite the latter's complaints of pain and forecasts of what he would do when he got up, the laugh had not been completely against him. He had received the honourable distinction of extra lesson for ragging in French. He had been "touched up" by the prefect of his dormitory for creating a disturbance in the small hours. In fact, he had gone through all the usual preliminaries, and become a full-blown Eckletonian.