Boycotted | Page 7

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 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