Boycotted | Page 8

as well as we
could, with the promise that if in three weeks no one else showed signs
of knocking up, we should be allowed to go home.
Of course, we were awfully sold at first, and by no means in an amiable
frame of mind. It is no joke to be done out of Christmas at home. What
a dolt that Gilks was to get scarlet fever! Why could he not have waited
till he got home?
But after a day or two we shook down, as British boys will, to our lot.
After all, it was only a case of putting off our holiday, and meanwhile
we were allowed to do anything we liked, short of setting the place on
fire, or kicking up a row near the infirmary.
There were enough of us to turn out two good teams at football, or to
run a big paper-chase across country, or get up a grand concert of an
evening; and not too many of us to crowd into the long dormitory,
where, for all we were interfered with, we might have prolonged our
bolster matches "from eve to dewy morn."
In time we came to look upon our confinement as rather a spree than
otherwise, and this feeling was considerably heightened by the arrival
of several hampers at the beginning of Christmas week, including a
magnificent one from Dr Allsuch himself, along with a message
bidding us be sure and have a merry Christmas. We voted the doctor a
brick, and drank his health in ginger beer, with great enthusiasm, to the
toast of "Dr Allsuch, and all such bricks!"
It was on Christmas Eve, after a specially grand banquet off the
contents of one of these hampers, that we crowded round the big
common- hall fire in a very complacent frame of mind, uncommonly

well satisfied and comfortable within and without.
"I don't know," said Lamb meditatively, cracking a walnut between his
finger and thumb, and slowly skinning it--"I don't know; Gilks might
have done us a worse turn after all."
"I rather wish he'd make a yearly thing of it," said Ellis. "They say he's
pulled through all right."
"Oh yes, he's all right! and so are the other three. In fact, French and
Addley never had scarlet fever at all. It was a false alarm."
"Well," said Lamb, "I'm jolly glad of it! I wouldn't have cared for any
of them to die, you know."
Lamb said this in a tone as if we should all be rather surprised to hear
him say so.
"Nobody ever did die at Ferriby, did they?" said Jim Sparrow, the
youngest and tenderest specimen we had at Jolliffe's.
It was rather cheek of a kid like Jim to interpose at all in a conversation
of his seniors, and it seemed as if he was going to get snubbed by
receiving no reply, when Fergus suddenly took the thing up.
"Eh, young Jim Sparrow, what's that you're saying?"
Fergus was the wag of our house--indeed, he was the only Irishman we
could boast of, and the fact of his being an Irishman always made us
inclined to laugh whenever he spoke. We could see now by the twinkle
in his eye that he was going to let off the steam at Jim Sparrow's
expense.
"I said," replied Jim, blushing rather to find every body listening to him,
"nobody's ever died at Ferriby, have they?"
Fergus gazed at him in astonishment.
"What!" exclaimed he, "you mean to say you never heard of poor

Bubbles?"
"Bubbles? No," replied Jim, looking rather scared.
"Just fancy that!" said Fergus, turning round to us; "never heard of
Bubbles!"
Of course we, who saw what the wag was driving at, looked rather
surprised and a little mysterious.
"What was it?" inquired Jim Sparrow, looking half ashamed of himself.
"Eh? Well, if you never heard it, I'd better not tell you. It's not a nice
story, is it, you fellows?"
"Horrible!" said Lamb, starting at another walnut.
"Oh, do tell me!" cried Jim eagerly, "I'm so fond of stories;" and he
settled himself back in his chair rather uneasily, and tried to look as if it
was all good fun.
"Well, if you do want it I'll tell you; but don't blame me if it upsets you,
that's all!" replied the irrepressible Fergus.
Jim looked as heroic as he could, and wished he had never asked to be
enlightened on the subject of Bubbles.
Fergus refreshed himself with an orange, stuck his feet into the fender,
and began in a solemn voice.
"I suppose, Jim Sparrow, if you have never heard about Bubbles, you
really don't know the history of the school at all. You don't even know
how it came to be called Ferriby?"
"No," responded Jim, keeping