Adams made no attempt at gravity and shook with laughter.
“But it can’t go on,” he said. “David’s becoming a nuisance, and gating him and giving him lines to write is no earthly good. What he wants is a good licking and plenty of exercise. There’s not an ounce of harm in him.”
“Oh, he’s the straightest chap in the world,” said Maddox.
“Well, you might warn him. Tell him next time he’s reported to me, I shall send him to the Head with a request that he shall be swished. And how’s the rest of the house?”
“Oh, pretty slack, sir. It’s rotten weather, you see. Weather makes a lot of difference to us.”
“I know. There’s always more trouble this half than any. Try to keep them up to the mark, Frank.”
“I’ll do my best sir. But I’ve got an awful lot of work with this Trinity scholarship exam. coming or in a fortnight. I’m as rusty as nails over my history.”
Adams smoked his pipe for a little in silence.
“By the way, you pull all right with Cruikshank now, don’t you?” he asked.
“Rather. I used to bar him awfully, but we—well, we had a talk after Hughes was sent away, and decided to get on better together. Crookles is a good chap.”
“Glad you’ve found that out,” said Adams. “You never would believe me when I told you so. Well, tell David that the wooden eye of Nemesis is on him, and see if you can’t make him less obstreperous. He thinks more of what you say than of what any one else says. He simply jumped down my throat the other day in your defence.”
“Because I ventured to criticise your play in that house-racquet tie, when we were nearly beaten by Thomas’s. I said I thought we should have won more easily if you had served with more care and less force. David turned quite purple, and said, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if he knew what he was about.’”
“Well, I don’t know. He only reminded me that you know more about racquets than I do, which is perfectly true. Well, are you off? Tell David not to make himself so conspicuous.”
Maddox went upstairs again after this to his study, where his fag was putting out his tea-things. David, of course, after his promotion into the fifth form, had ceased to be in a state of servitude, and his successor was a small bony youth called Jevons, who usually had a cold in the head, and an inky handkerchief with which to minister to it. There was no kind of briskness about him; he was timid and slovenly and melancholy, and went about his duties as if laying out the bake-meats for the funeral of a dear departed friend. Maddox did his best with him, tried to encourage him to look the world in the face a little more, and wash a little more, and not drag his feet as he walked; but it was a dismal change from being attended to by the adroit and willing David. David, it is true, sometimes smashed things by running with them, or from excess of zeal in cleaning the inside of a tea-cup, but that was better than finding forgotten tea-leaves in the pot one day, or crumbs and other foreign substances in the sugar, and little bits of butter sticking to the bottom of the plates. But though Maddox was kind to this spiritless youth, David, on the occasions when he came across him, was severely critical. It seemed to him a dreadful affair that his place should be filled by so abject a specimen, and, mixed with his contempt for Jevons, there was a certain jealousy that he should go in and out of Maddox’s study as he chose, and joylessly perform all the offices in which David had delighted. Fifth-form boy as he was, he would have loved to continue fagging for Maddox, for the sake of seeing that he was properly looked after, and for the intimacy which that would give him. Now, since their ages and places sundered them so widely in ordinary school-life, David necessarily saw much less of him than before. He knew that this must be so, but it did not make him like Jevons the more.