Boycotted | Page 7

young Wright, who
happened to be in the next room, heard him speaking about you. Well,
we've boycotted him. Not a fellow is allowed to speak to him, or notice
him, or go near him. Everybody's been bound over, and unless some
one plays traitor, the place will get too hot for him before the term's up.
And serve him right too. Harrison and I--"
Here the letter broke off.
I felt stunned; and, strange to say, the sudden discovery left me as
miserable as it found me. I suppose I was ill; but for a short time my
passion got the upper hand, and made it worse for me than if I had
never known the truth.
But it didn't last long. There came a knock at the door, and, without
waiting for an invitation, Harrison came into the room, looking so
miserable and scared that I scarcely recognised him for a moment. He
was evidently prepared for any sort of rebuff, and I despised myself far
more than him as I heard the half-frightened voice in which he began.

"Smither, old man--"
He got no farther; or at least I did not hear any more. It seemed like a
dream after that. I was dimly conscious of his hand on my arm and then
round me. The next thing I was aware of was that I was lying in bed,
with him sitting beside me sponging my forehead.
"Has the bed-bell rung?" I asked.
"My dear fellow, you've been in bed a fortnight," said he, bending over
me; "but you mustn't talk now."
After awhile I asked again--
"Why are you here, then?" for the term had had only three days to run
when I had been taken ill.
"We couldn't go, old man. The fellows begged Draven to let them stay
till you were out of danger, and he did. They're all here. This is
Christmas Day, and they will be glad to hear you are better. But really
you mustn't talk, please."
"Tell the fellows to go home, then," I said, "and wish them a Merry
Christmas, and say--"
"Really, old man," pleaded Harrison, looking quite frightened, "don't
talk."
That was the quietest, but not the least hopeful Christmas Day I ever
spent.
And when Draven's met again next term, I fancy most of us had got by
heart the good Christmas motto, "Goodwill to men," and were mutually
agreed that, whatever manly and noble sports we should engage in
during the year, boycotting should not be one of them.
CHAPTER TWO.

A TRUE STORY IN TWO
CHAPTERS.
Sub-Chapter I.
THE STORY.
Ferriby had broken up. The rats and mice were having their innings in
the schoolrooms, and the big bell was getting rusty for want of exercise.
The door of the Lower Third had not had a panel kicked out of it for a
whole week, and Dr Allsuch's pictures and sofas and piano were all
stacked up in the Detention Room while their proper quarters
underwent a "doing-up."
There was no mistake about the school having broken up. And yet, if it
was so, how came we all to be there this Christmas week, instead of
sitting at our own firesides in the bosoms of our own families,
anywhere but at Ferriby?
When I say all, I mean all in Jolliffe's House; the others had cleared out.
Bull's was empty, and Wragg's, across the quadrangle, had not a ghost
of a fellow left. Nor had the doctor's. Every other house was shut up,
but Jolliffe's was as full up as the night before a county match, and no
sign of an exodus.
Of course the reader guesses the reason at once!
"I know," says one virtuous youth; "they'd all been detained for bad
conduct, and stopped their holidays!"
Wrong, my exemplary one! Jolliffe's was the best behaved house in
Ferriby, though I say so who should not. But any one could tell you so.
For every thousand lines of imposition the other houses had to turn out
Jolliffe's only had a hundred, and for every half-dozen canes worn out
on the horny palms of Bull's and Wragg's, one was quite enough for us.
No; the fact was, one of our fellows had had scarlet fever a fortnight

before the holidays, and as he was in and out with us for some days
before it was discovered, sleeping in our dormitory, and sitting next to
us in class it was a settled thing we were all in for it.
So the school was suddenly broken up, the other houses all packed off,
the sickly ones among us--there were only one or two--removed to the
infirmary, and the rest of us, under the charge of Jolliffe himself,
invited to make the best of a bad job, and enjoy ourselves