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Updated: May 7, 2025
A stream of lead poured through the window, but the spluttering of bullets on the walls of the room had no more effect on me than the pattering of hailstones. "May I finish my sentence, madam?" "Not as you intended, sir." "I can't go back on old Bloggs' teaching, madam." She pouted and frowned, both at once, and the Colonel bawled through the noise of the fusillade, "Being what?"
"Certainly I have been wondering why you were so silent, and looked so ... grave." "Be honest and fear not, Master Wheatman. You were not going to say 'grave." "At the expense of many whippings from old Bloggs, I learned to be precise in the use of words." "I know, hence you were not going to say 'grave." "You will allow me to choose my own words, madam."
Here every brick and stone was as a familiar friend, for the little grammar school backed on to the wall at the very spot where the main street led through the old north gate of the town. Old Master Bloggs lived in a tiny house on the side of the school away from the gate.
Admirable and pretty as Miss Higgs, Miss Bloggs, or Miss Muggins might be, my youthful training prevented my seeing beyond her fringe, finger-nails, figure, and aspirates, to her solid excellences; and from sergeants'-dances I returned quite heart-whole and still unplighted to the Colonel's cook. But Dolores De Souza was different.
"I think you're right, madam," said I. "Bloggs, dear old chap, flogged the meaning of Virgil into me, but I wish he had flogged in some of the meaning of life along with it. I feel as helpless as Saul would have felt with David's sling and stones." "Are you as one fighting a Goliath?" "I am," said I, not able now to speak lightly, and not daring to look at her.
For his part, the Colonel stepped clear of the crowd on the causeway and stood at the salute. He was, I thought, the most self-possessed person in the square, and, indeed, was taking a pinch of snuff as soon as the formality was over, while Margaret was red and white by turns, and I shook at the knees as if expecting the Prince, in the manner of old Bloggs, to call me out and thrash me soundly.
I suppose dear old Bloggs was a bachelor?" "He was," said I, resigning the contest in despair. The doctor lived in a fair-sized stick-and-wattle house. He was a dapper little man, with a cleverish, weakling cast of face, and was all on the jump with the turn things had taken.
And for me, the pride of old Bloggs for Latin and of all the lads for fighting, the most stirring deed of arms available was shooting rabbits. So, consuming inwardly with thoughts of my hard fate, I refused to go to the vicar's. Mother should go. For her it would be a real treat, and Kate would be the better under her quiet, seeing eyes.
"Livy and Caesar, and stuff like that, but mainly Virgil." "Then it's very, very curious," she whispered emphatically. No doubt yokel blood ought not to run like wine under the mighty pulse of Virgil, and I sourly asked, "What's curious, madam? Old Bloggs has nothing to teach except Latin, and I happened to take to it. Why curious?" "Really, Master Wheatman, not curious?
There is one old man there, extremely rich, with one of the best faces of the lot, just like a hyena. I never used to know how he had got so rich. So one evening I asked one of the millionaires how old Bloggs had made all his money. "How he made it?" he answered with a sneer. "Why he made it by taking it out of widows and orphans." Widows and orphans! I thought, what an excellent idea.
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