Stalky & Co.. Rudyard Kipling
Stalky leaped out, all pink as he was, and shook Beetle into some sort of coherence; but his tale prostrated them afresh.
“I bunked for the boot-cupboard the second I heard King go down-stairs. Beetle tumbled in on top of me. The spare key’s hid behind the loose board. There isn’t a shadow of evidence,” said Stalky. They were all chanting together.
“And he turned us out himself – himself – himself!” This from McTurk. “He can’t begin to suspect us. Oh, Stalky, it’s the loveliest thing we’ve ever done.”
“Gum! Gum! Dollops of gum!” shouted Beetle, his spectacles gleaming through a sea of lather. “Ink and blood all mixed. I held the little beast’s head all over the Latin proses for Monday. Golly, how the oil stunk! And Rabbits-Eggs told King to poultice his nose! Did you hit Rabbits-Eggs, Stalky?”
“Did I jolly well not? Tweaked him all over. Did you hear him curse? Oh, I shall be sick in a minute if I don’t stop.”
But dressing was a slow process, because McTurk was obliged to dance when he heard that the musk basket was broken, and, moreover, Beetle retailed all King’s language with emendations and purple insets.
“Shockin’!” said Stalky, collapsing in a helpless welter of half-hitched trousers. “So dam’ bad, too, for innocent boys like us! Wonder what they’d say at ‘St. Winifred’s, or the World of School.’ – By gum! That reminds me we owe the Lower Third one for assaultin’ Beetle when he chivied Manders minor. Come on! It’s an alibi, Samivel; and, besides, if we let ‘em off they’ll be worse next time.”
The Lower Third had set a guard upon their form-room for the space of a full hour, which to a boy is a lifetime. Now they were busy with their Saturday evening businesses – cooking sparrows over the gas with rusty nibs; brewing unholy drinks in gallipots; skinning moles with pocket-knives; attending to paper trays full of silkworms, or discussing the iniquities of their elders with a freedom, fluency, and point that would have amazed their parents. The blow fell without warning. Stalky upset a form crowded with small boys among their own cooking utensils, McTurk raided the untidy lockers as a terrier digs at a rabbit-hole, while Beetle poured ink upon such heads as he could not appeal to with a Smith’s Classical Dictionary. Three brisk minutes accounted for many silkworms, pet larvae, French exercises, school caps, half-prepared bones and skulls, and a dozen pots of home-made sloe jam. It was a great wreckage, and the form-room looked as though three conflicting tempests had smitten it.
“Phew!” said Stalky, drawing breath outside the door (amid groans of “Oh, you beastly ca-ads! You think yourselves awful funny,” and so forth). “That’s all right. Never let the sun go down upon your wrath. Rummy little devils, fags. Got no notion o’ combinin’.”
“Six of ‘em sat on my head when I went in after Manders minor,” said Beetle. “I warned ‘em what they’d get, though.”
“Everybody paid in full – beautiful feelin’,” said McTurk absently, as they strolled along the corridor. “Don’t think we’d better say much about King, though, do you, Stalky?”
“Not much. Our line is injured innocence, of course – same as when the Sergeant reported us on suspicion of smoking in the bunkers. If I hadn’t thought of buyin’ the pepper and spillin’ it all over our clothes, he’d have smelt us. King was gha-astly facetious about that. ‘Called us bird-stuffers in form for a week.”
“Ah, King hates the Natural History Society because little Hartopp is president. Mustn’t do anything in the Coll. without glorifyin’ King,” said McTurk. “But he must be a putrid ass, know, to suppose at our time o’ life we’d go and stuff birds like fags.”
“Poor old King!” said Beetle. “He’s unpopular in Common-room, and they’ll chaff his head off about Rabbits-Eggs. Golly! How lovely! How beautiful! How holy! But you should have seen his face when the first rock came in! And the earth from the basket!”
So they were all stricken helpless for five minutes.
They repaired at last to Abanazar’s study, and were received reverently.
“What’s the matter?” said Stalky, quick to realize new atmospheres.
“You know jolly well,” said Abanazar. “You’ll be expelled if you get caught. King is a gibbering maniac.”
“Who? Which? What? Expelled for how? We only played the war-drum. We’ve got turned out for that already.”
“Do you chaps mean to say you didn’t make Rabbits-Eggs drunk and bribe him to rock King’s rooms?”
“Bribe him? No, that I’ll swear we didn’t,” said Stalky, with a relieved heart, for he loved not to tell lies. “What a low mind you’ve got, Pussy! We’ve been down having a bath. Did Rabbits-Eggs rock King? Strong, perseverin’ man King? Shockin’!”
“Awf’ly. King’s frothing at the mouth. There’s bell for prayers. Come on.”
“Wait a sec,” said Stalky, continuing the conversation in a loud and cheerful voice, as they descended the stairs. “What did Rabbits-Eggs rock King for?”
“I know,” said Beetle, as they passed King’s open door. “I was in his study.”
“Hush, you ass!” hissed the Emperor of China. “Oh, he’s gone down to prayers,” said Beetle, watching the shadow of the house-master on the wall. “Rabbits-Eggs was only a bit drunk, swearin’ at his horse, and King jawed him through the window, and then, of course, he rocked King.”
“Do you mean to say,” said Stalky, “that King began it?”
King was behind them, and every well-weighed word went up the staircase like an arrow. “I can only swear,” said Beetle, “that King cursed like a bargee. Simply disgustin’. I’m goin’ to write to my father about it.”
“Better report it to Mason,” suggested Stalky. “He knows our tender consciences. Hold on a shake. I’ve got to tie my boot-lace.”
The other study hurried forward. They did not wish to be dragged into stage asides of this nature. So it was left to McTurk to sum up the situation beneath the guns of the enemy.
“You see,” said the Irishman, hanging on the banister, “he begins by bullying little chaps; then he bullies the big chaps; then he bullies some one who isn’t connected with the College, and then catches it. Serves him jolly well right… I beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t see you were coming down the staircase.”
The black gown tore past like a thunder-storm, and in its wake, three abreast, arms linked, the Aladdin company rolled up the big corridor to prayers, singing with most innocent intention:
“Arrah, Patsy, mind the baby! Arrah, Patsy, mind the child!
Wrap him up in an overcoat, he’s surely goin’ wild!
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