Actons Feud | Page 9

let Biffen's mob maul you to that extent."
"Gus, my boy, instead of frowsing up here all the afternoon with your books, you should have been on the touch-line watching those Biffenites at their new tricks. Your opinion then would have a little avoirdupois. As it is, you Perry Exhibit, it is worth exactly nothing."
"You're deucedly classical to-night, Jim."
"Oh, I'm sick of this forsaken match and all the compliments we've had over it. I'm going now to have a tub, and then we'll get that Latin paper through, and, thirdly, I'll have the chessmen out."
"Sony, I can't, Jim," said Todd, discontentedly. "There is that beastly Perry Scholarship--I must really do something for that!"
"Thomas Rot, Esq.!" said Cotton. "Haven't you been a-cramming and a-guzzling for that all this afternoon? You've a duty towards your chums, Toddy, so I tell you."
"That's all very well, Jim, for you, who are going to break some crammer's heart, and then crawl into the Army through the Militia, but my pater wants me to do something in the Perry, I tell you."
"Chess!" said Cotton, disregarding Todd's bleat, and then, with a sly smile, he added, "Shilling a game, Gus, and you know you always pull off the odd one."
"All right," said Todd, swallowing the bait with forlorn eagerness; "I'll have the board set out if you must come in."
"Oh, I must!" said Cotton, with a half-sneer at Todd's anxiety to pick up a small sum. "Clear the table, and we'll make a snug evening of it."
Todd's method of clearing a table was novel, if not original. He carried it bodily into Cotton's room, and then returned with his friend's mahogany, which was undoubtedly more ornamental than his own.
Acton was absolutely right when he sneeringly called Gus "Cotton's jackal." Todd was exactly of the material which makes a good jackal, though he never became quite Jim Cotton's toady. He was a sharp, selfish individual, good-looking in an aimless kind of way, with a slack, feeble mouth, and a wandering, indecisive glance. He had a quick, shallow cleverness, which could get up pretty easily enough of inexact knowledge to pass muster in the schools. Old Corker knew his capabilities to a hair, and would now and then, when Gus offered up some hazy, specious guess-work, blister him with a little biting sarcasm. Todd feared the Doctor as he feared no one else. Todd's chief private moan was that he never had any money. His father was a rich man, but had some ideas which were rather rough on his weak-kneed son. He tipped poor Gus as though he were some thrifty hairdresser's son, and Todd had to try to ruffle it with young Amorians on as many shillings as they had crowns. Not a lad who ever had naturally any large amount of self-respect, the little he had soon went, and he became, while still a fag, a hewer of wood and drawer of water to his better-tipped cronies. His destiny finished when, on his entry into the Fifth, Jim Cotton claimed him, and subsidized him as his man.
At the beginning of the term his father had told him that if he could make a good show in the Perry Exhibition there need not be any more grumbling about his tip. Gus came back to St. Amory's hysterically anxious to cut out all competitors for the Perry, but the shackles of his old serfdom were still about him. When he showed signs of being restive to the old claims, and recommended Cotton to do his own classics and mathematics, Cotton coolly and calmly demanded repayment of sundry loans contracted of old. Todd had not the pluck to face a term of plain living and high thinking by paying his former patron all he owed him and exhausting all his present tip by so doing, but flabbily, though discontentedly, caved in, and became Cotton's jackal as before.
Cotton was by no means as bad as his endearing name might make you think. He was a tall, heavy fellow, with a large, determined-looking face. He was wonderfully stupid in the schools, but was quite clever enough to know it. He had some good qualities. He was straight enough in all extra-school affairs, did not lie, nor fear any one; kept his word, and expected you to keep yours.
"You can't beat Hodgson of the Sixth, Gus, so what is the good of sweating all the term? Hodgson's got the deuce of a pull over you to start with."
"I'm not frightened of Hodgson if you wouldn't bother, Jim."
"Can't do without you, old cock. You're just the fellow to lift my Latin and those filthy mathematics high enough out of the mud to keep the beaks from worrying me to death. I tried Philips for a week, but he did such weird screeds in the