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Telson, fortunately for him, was ignorant of the fact as ignorant, indeed, as Miss Stringer was of the fact that the little dear she was addressing was a Willoughbite. "Telson, ma'am," said Telson, following Parson with longing eyes. "Johnny?" said the lady. "No Augustus," replied the proud bearer of the name. Miss Stringer surveyed him benevolently.
And are we likely to do that as long as we are all at sixes and sevens, pulling different ways, caring far more about our own gratifications than the good of the whole school? I don't think so, and I don't believe Mr Bloomfield does either. Every fellow worth the name of a Willoughbite must be sorry to see things as they are.
He could not, perhaps, throw off the Dominie altogether on such occasions, but he always tried hard, and if there had been no one more formidable than "Paddy" to deal with the meal would have been comparatively pleasant and unalarming. But there was a Mrs Patrick and a Mrs Patrick's sister, and before these awful personages the boldest Willoughbite quailed and trembled.
The honours of the school, whether in class or in field, always seemed to go in any direction but their own, and as, for five or six years at any rate, they had been unable to claim any one distinguished Willoughbite as a member of their house, they had come to regard themselves somewhat in the light of Ishmaelites.
Once, some years ago, a petition signed by the entire school, from the captain down to the junior fag, praying for a holiday in honour of an old Willoughbite having led the British troops to victory in a great battle, had been presented and granted.
There was a Premier and a Home Secretary, and a First Lord of the Admiralty, and so on, and great was the pride of a Willoughbite when he first heard himself referred to as the Right Honourable! Everything that came before the house had to come in the form of a bill or a resolution.
It was half-past four before Rockshire finally retired with a total for their second innings of ninety-nine, leaving the school boys with eighty runs to obtain to win. It was not a formidable total after their first-innings performance, but at the outset a calamity happened enough to depress the hopes of any Willoughbite.
And his fairness in this respect was fully justified, for the school put together a hundred and twelve runs just twenty more than their opponents a performance which not even the most sanguine Willoughbite had dared to anticipate. Towards this total Riddell, who had gone in last and carried his bat, had contributed seven, not a little to his own surprise and the delight of the onlooking Welchers.
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