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Updated: May 7, 2025
With Speug in the shafts, who had the strength of a man in his compact little body, and Moossy pulling on the other side, the coach was soon upon the road again, amid a torrent of gratitude from Moossy and his wife, partly in English, but mostly in German, but all quite plain to the boys, for gratitude is always understood in any language.
Speug suggested that as this plague of mice had burst upon the French class-room the scholars should meet the calamity like men, and asked Moossy's permission to go out upon the chase. For once Moossy and his pupils had one mind, and the school gave itself to its heart's content, and without a thought of consequences, to a mouse hunt.
If you excluded two or three Englishmen who spoke with an accent suggestive of an effeminate character, and had a fearsome habit of walking on the Sabbath, and poor "Moossy," the French master at the Seminary, who was a quantity not worth considering, the foreign element in Muirtown during the classical days consisted of the Count.
It was a rough life in the Seminary, with plain food and strenuous games; with well-worn and well-torn clothes; where little trouble was taken to give interest to your work, and little praise awarded when you did it well; where you were bullied by the stronger fellows without redress, and thrashed for very little reason; where there were also many coarsenesses which were sickening at the time to any lad with a sense of decency, and which he is glad, if he can, to forget; but, at least, there was one oasis in the wilderness where there was nothing but enjoyment for the boys, and that was the "Department of Modern Languages," over which Moossy was supposed to preside.
When she had been carried in she was so light that Moossy could lift her himself she compelled the boys to come in, too, and Moossy made fragrant coffee, and this they had with strange German cakes, which were not half bad, and to which they both did ample justice.
It is, however, an excellent thing to have the graduates, and the trim class-room, and the tables of the foreign verbs upon the wall, and the conversation classes Speug at a conversation class! and all the rest of it; but, oh! the days of long ago and Moossy!
Boys going up to write on the blackboard, where they never wrote anything but nonsense, would work symbols with light and rapid touch upon the back of Moossy's coat as they returned; and if one after the other, adding to the work of art, could draw what was supposed to be a human face upon Moossy, the class was satisfied it had not lost the hour.
The name of the Count had been sunk in the nobility which we conferred upon him, and which was the tribute of our respectful admiration, but "Moossy" was a term of good-humoured contempt.
No doubt the Count was womanish in his dress, and had fantastic manners, but we knew he was a gallant gentleman, who was afraid of nobody and was always ready to serve his friends; he was débonnaire, and counted himself the equal of anyone in Muirtown, but Moossy was little better than an abject.
They still called him Moossy, as they had done before, and he looked, to tell the truth, almost as shabby and his hair was as long as ever; but he was in great spirits and much touched by the kindness of his tormentors.
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