A Dog with a Bad Name | Page 3

what they've no right to make us do--that's all I care about."
"Well, I don't know," said Pridger, another of the Sixth; "if it came to the School licking us, I fancy I'd try to prevent that."
"And if it came to the Sixth licking us," said young Forrester, who was of the audacious order, "I fancy I'd try to put a stopper on that."
There was a smile at this, for the valiant junior was small for his age, and flimsily built. Smiles, however, were not the order of the day, and for the most part Bolsover brooded over her tribulations in sulky silence.
The boys had not much in common, and even a calamity like the present failed to bring them together. The big boys mooned about and thought of their lost liberties, of the afternoons in the tuck-shop, of the yellow- backed novels under the trees, of the loafings down town, and wondered if they should ever be happy again. The little boys--some of them--wept secretly in corners, as they pictured themselves among the killed and wounded on the terrible football field. And as the sharp October wind cut across the play-ground, they shuddered, great and small, at the prospect of standing there on Saturday, without coats or waistcoats, and wondered if Frampton was designedly dooming them to premature graves.
A few, a very few, of the more sensible ones, tried to knock up a little practice game and prepare themselves for the terrible ordeal. Among these were two boys belonging to the group whose conversation the reader has already overheard.
One of them, young Forrester, has already been introduced. Junior as he was, he was a favourite all over Bolsover, for he was about the only boy in the school who was always in good spirits, and did not seem to be infected with the universal dry-rot of the place. He was a small, handsome boy, older indeed then he looked (for he was nearly fifteen), not particularly clever or particularly jocular. To look at him you would have thought him delicate, but there was nothing feeble in his manner. He looked you straight in the face with a pair of brown saucy eyes; he was ready to break his neck to oblige any one; and his pocket- money (fancy a Bolsover boy having pocket-money!) was common property. Altogether he was a phenomenon at Bolsover, and fellows took to him instinctively, as fellows often do take to one whose character and disposition are a contrast to their own. Besides this, young Forrester was neither a prig nor a toady, and devoted himself to no one in particular, so that everybody had the benefit of his good spirits, and enjoyed his pranks impartially.
The other boy, who appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen, was of a different kind. He, too, was a cut above the average Bolsoverian, for he was clever, and had a mind of his own. But he acted almost entirely on antipathies. He disliked everybody, except, perhaps, young Forrester, and he found fault with everything. Scarfe--that was his name was a Sixth Form boy, who did the right thing because he disliked doing what everybody else did, which was usually the wrong. He disliked his school-fellows, and therefore was not displeased with Mr Frampton's reforms; but he disliked Mr Frampton and the new masters, and therefore hoped the school would resist their authority. As for what he himself should do, that would depend on which particular antipathy was uppermost when the time came.
Curiously enough, Bolsover by no means disliked Scarfe. They rather respected a fellow who had ideas of his own, when they themselves had so few; and as each boy, as a rule, could sympathise with his dislike of everybody else, with one exception, he found plenty of adherents and not a few toadies.
Forrester was about the only boy he really did not dislike, because Forrester did not care twopence whether any one liked him or not, and he himself was quite fond of Scarfe.
"What do you think the fellows will do?" said the junior, after attempting for the sixth time to "drop" the ball over the goal without success.
"Why, obey, of course," said Scarfe scornfully.
"Shall you?"
"I suppose so."
"Why, I thought you were going to stick out."
"No doubt a lot of the fellows would like it if I did. They always like somebody else to do what they don't care to do themselves."
"Well, you and I'll be on different sides," said the youngster, making another vain attempt at the goal. "I'm sorry for you, my boy."
"So am I; I'd like to see the Sixth beaten. But there's not much chance of it if the kicking's left to you."
"I tell you what," said Forrester, ignoring the gibe. "I'm curious to know what Cad Jeffreys means to do. We're bound to