Mike

The school, or the remnants of it, waited impatiently while the prefect whose turn it was to read stammered nervously through the lesson.  They were anxious to get on to what the Head was going to say at the end of prayers.  At last it was over.  The school waited, all ears.

The headmaster bent down from the dais and called to Firby-Smith, who was standing in his place with the Sixth.

The Gazeka, blushing warmly, stepped forward.

“Bring me a school list, Firby-Smith,” said the headmaster.

The Gazeka was wearing a pair of very squeaky boots that morning.  They sounded deafening as he walked out of the room.

The school waited.

Presently a distant squeaking was heard, and Firby-Smith returned, bearing a large sheet of paper.

The headmaster thanked him, and spread it out on the reading-desk.

Then, calmly, as if it were an occurrence of every day, he began to call the roll.

“Abney.”

No answer.

“Adams.”

No answer.

“Allenby.”

“Here, sir,” from a table at the end of the room.  Allenby was a prefect, in the Science Sixth.

The headmaster made a mark against his name with a pencil.

“Arkwright.”

No answer.

He began to call the names more rapidly.

“Arlington.  Arthur.  Ashe.  Aston.”

“Here, sir,” in a shrill treble from the rider in motorcars.

The headmaster made another tick.

The list came to an end after what seemed to the school an unconscionable time, and he rolled up the paper again, and stepped to the edge of the dais.

“All boys not in the Sixth Form,” he said, “will go to their form-rooms and get their books and writing-materials, and return to the Hall.”

("Good work,” murmured Mr. Seymour to himself.  “Looks as if we should get that holiday after all.”)

“The Sixth Form will go to their form-room as usual.  I should like to speak to the masters for a moment.”

He nodded dismissal to the school.

The masters collected on the daïs.

“I find that I shall not require your services to-day,” said the headmaster.  “If you will kindly set the boys in your forms some work that will keep them occupied, I will look after them here.  It is a lovely day,” he added, with a smile, “and I am sure you will all enjoy yourselves a great deal more in the open air.”

“That,” said Mr. Seymour to Mr. Spence, as they went downstairs, “is what I call a genuine sportsman.”

“My opinion neatly expressed,” said Mr. Spence.  “Come on the river.  Or shall we put up a net, and have a knock?”

“River, I think.  Meet you at the boat-house.”

“All right.  Don’t be long.”

“If every day were run on these lines, school-mastering wouldn’t be such a bad profession.  I wonder if one could persuade one’s form to run amuck as a regular thing.”

“Pity one can’t.  It seems to me the ideal state of things.  Ensures the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

“I say!  Suppose the school has gone up the river, too, and we meet them!  What shall we do?”

“Thank them,” said Mr. Spence, “most kindly.  They’ve done us well.”

The school had not gone up the river.  They had marched in a solid body, with the school band at their head playing Sousa, in the direction of Worfield, a market town of some importance, distant about five miles.  Of what they did and what the natives thought of it all, no very distinct records remain.  The thing is a tradition on the countryside now, an event colossal and heroic, to be talked about in the tap-room of the village inn during the long winter evenings.  The papers got hold of it, but were curiously misled as to the nature of the demonstration.  This was the fault of the reporter on the staff of the Worfield Intelligencer and Farmers’ Guide, who saw in the thing a legitimate “march-out,” and, questioning a straggler as to the reason for the expedition and gathering foggily that the restoration to health of the Eminent Person was at the bottom of it, said so in his paper.  And two days later, at about the time when Retribution had got seriously to work, the Daily Mail reprinted the account, with comments and elaborations, and headed it “Loyal Schoolboys.”  The writer said that great credit was due to the headmaster of Wrykyn for his ingenuity in devising and organising so novel a thanksgiving celebration.  And there was the usual conversation between “a rosy-cheeked lad of some sixteen summers” and “our representative,” in which the rosy-cheeked one spoke most kindly of the head-master, who seemed to be a warm personal friend of his.