Pip. Ian Hay
would advance to "Me," and then to "Fah," the effects achieved by the elder male choristers, whose voices were reaching the cracking stage, as the scale approached the topmost "Doh," being as surprising as they were various.
The hour always concluded with a sort of musical steeplechase. The white wand would skip incontinently from Doh to Fah, and from Me to Soh, the singers following after—faint yet pursuing. At the end of three minutes, the field having tailed out, so to speak, every note in the gamut was being sung, fortissimo, by at least one member of the choir, and the total effect was more suggestive of a home for lost dogs than an academy for the sons and daughters of gentlemen.
Our friends enjoyed this diversion hugely. Pipette, who could carol like a lark, hopped from note to note with an agility only equalled by that of the white wand itself. Pip, who had no music in his soul, adopted a different method of procedure. Selecting a note well within his compass, he would stick to it with characteristic thoroughness and a gradually blackening countenance, until a final flourish from the white wand intimated to all and sundry that this nuisance must now cease.
Pip and Pipette were also submitted to a rather farcical ordeal which Mr. Pocklington called his "common-sense test." Shortly after their arrival they were called into the Study, where Mr. Pocklington, after a little homily on the danger of judging by appearances and the fallaciousness of giving preference to quantity rather than quality, produced a threepenny-bit and a penny, and commanded his auditors to take their choice. Pipette unhesitatingly picked the threepenny-bit, and was commended for her acumen. Pip, when it came to his turn, selected the penny, and after being soundly rated for his stupidity was cast forth from the Study and bidden to learn sense. A week later he was again put to the test, and again chose the penny, repeating his performance with stolid regularity when given a further opportunity of redeeming his character the following week. After that the affair developed into a kind of round game, Mr. Pocklington producing the two coins from time to time and Pip invariably selecting the penny—a proceeding which gave his preceptor unlimited opportunities for tiresome little lectures to the school in general, and Pip in particular, on the subjects mentioned above.
Finally, after the entertainment had been repeated week by week for some time, Pipette, whose loyal little soul chafed at the sycophantic giggles of the other boys and girls when Pip was being scarified by Mr. Pocklington, boldly broached the matter to her brother.
"Pip, why don't you take the fripenny-bit? If you did he'd stop bein' so howwid to you."
Pip regarded his sister's small eager face with cold scorn.
"If once I took the threepenny-bit," he replied, "he'd stop offerin' the money altogether. Why, I've made eightpence since I came here. Silly kid!"
This was the last occasion in their lives on which Pipette ever questioned the wisdom of her beloved brother's actions.
Both children made friends rapidly. Pip, indeed, soon after his arrival, received a proposal of marriage, which, ever ready to oblige a lady, he accepted forthwith. But he was reckoning without Pipette. That jealous little person, finding one day that Pip had suddenly deserted her, and was at that moment actually sharing his morning bun with his fiancée in the boot-room, incontinently burst in upon the lovers, and after a brief but decisive interview despatched her rival howling from the room, remaining herself to share the bun with the newly restored Pip, who, to be quite frank, had been finding the rôle of a Romeo, however passive, rather exacting.
Isabel Dinting, the disappointed lady, was inconsolable for a day or two, but she eventually recovered her spirits, and lived to heap coals of fire on Pip's head, as you shall hear.
One of the most curious and characteristic institutions at Wentworth House School was Mr. Pocklington's system of "Task-Tickets." Every boy and girl on entering the school received ten little tablets about the size of visiting-cards, inscribed with his or her name, and numbered from one to ten consecutively. If a pupil failed in a lesson or broke a rule, one of his Task-Tickets was impounded, and was not restored until the faulty lesson was perfected or a specified imposition performed. Periodically there would be an "inspection," and many a small head whose owner was discovered to be short of tickets would be hung in shame that day. Only such confirmed reprobates as Thomas Oates, the bad boy of the school (whom Mr. Pocklington in his more jocular moments addressed as "Titus," much to his hearers' mystification), could endure the stigma of being perpetually without a full complement. Thomas indeed once electrified the school by announcing to Miss Mary, when asked for a ticket in default of an unlearned lesson, that all his tickets were in pawn already, and that, until he had redeemed one of the same, he would be unable to oblige her. Mr. Pocklington and the majority of his staff were horror-struck at such iniquity; but Miss Mary, in whom was concentrated most of the common sense of the family, instituted a search in Master Thomas's desk, with the result that she triumphantly fished out no less than five tickets. All of which goes to prove that Thomas Oates, like a good many of us, preferred notoriety, even as a malefactor, to respectable oblivion.
The Task-Ticket system presented another feature of interest. Besides their regulation ten ordinary tickets, Mr. Pocklington's pupils were entitled to acquire "Special Task-Tickets." If you weeded the garden, or filled some ink-pots, or wrote a specially neat copy, you were presented with a Task-Ticket marked "Special" in red ink in one corner. Next time a breakdown in work or the infraction of a rule brought you within the sphere of operations of Mr. Pocklington's penal code, exemption from punishment could be purchased by payment of one or more of your Special Task-Tickets. This scheme was attractive in several ways. Good children—chiefly little girls, it must be admitted—accumulated these treasures assiduously for the mere joy of possession, the trifling fact that their owners were far too virtuous to be likely ever to have need of them being more than counterbalanced by the comfortable glow of satisfaction with which the existence of such a moral bank-balance suffused their rather self-righteous little bosoms. Wicked children, on the other hand, would laboriously collect tickets against a rainy day, and, having accumulated a sufficient store to pay for the consequences, would indulge in a prolonged orgy of sin until the last ticket was gone. Thomas Oates once found ten Special Task-Tickets in an old desk, and having straightway filled a like number of buttoned boots in the girls' dressing-room with soap-and-water, proffered the same in compensation. However, the possession of so much hoarded virtue in such a proclaimed reprobate roused the suspicions of the authorities. Inquiries were set on foot, the fraud was discovered, and Thomas was only saved from expulsion from Wentworth House School by the intercession of pretty Miss Amelia, who cherished a weakness for all renegades of the opposite sex.
Pip's tear-stained ex-fiancée, Isabel Dinting, anxious to drive away the depression resultant upon her unfortunate attachment, allowed herself to become badly bitten with the ticket-collecting mania. Her own ten ordinary tickets invariably presented a full muster, and all her soul was set upon the acquisition of Specials. These, by the way, were transferable, and consequently Isabel's friends were requested to bestir themselves, and by extra acts of virtue earn something to contribute to her store. Pip himself assisted her. One day he caught and expelled from the classroom a troublesome bumblebee, and, much to his surprise, was awarded a Special Task-Ticket by the grateful Miss Amelia. He promptly handed over the gift to Isabel, whose gratification knew no bounds. Touched by his adorer's thanks, Pip decided in his quiet way to help her further. Next morning the schoolroom suffered from a positive inundation of bumblebees, and the services rendered by Pip in removing them were rewarded by more Specials, all of which were duly handed over to the now greatly consoled Isabel. When, however, the phenomenon occurred again on the following morning, Miss Mary, who did not share her sister's romantic belief in the integrity of the male sex, became suspicious, and insisted on searching Pip's desk. An incautiously handled paper bag emitted a perfect cascade of moribund bumblebees, and Pip's ingenious device for obliging a lady stood revealed. After that he made no more contributions to the supply.
Mention has already been made of that arch-ruffian Master Thomas Oates. With him Pip waged war from the day that he entered the school. Hostilities commenced immediately. Thomas dared Pip to place his hand in a can of almost boiling water in the dressing-room. Pip did so, and kept it there unwinkingly for the space of a full minute. Next day his hand was skinless, and Father had to dress it for him in splendidly conspicuous bandages. Pip retaliated