For Fortune and Glory | Page 9

fellows who
clubbed together. Not but what it is cosy to linger over the meal with a
book in your hand, or propped up, as you sit alone at the corner of the
table, half turned to the hearth.
But Forsyth, Strachan, and Kavanagh liked to mess together, and
Strachan's room being the largest of the three, they selected that to have

their breakfast and tea in. All their cups, saucers, and so on, were kept
in a cupboard in that room, but toasting or such other light cookery as
their fags performed for them was done in their respective apartments,
for the avoidance of overcrowding and dispute amongst the operators.
Also, when bloaters, sprats, or sausages were in question, it was well
not to feed in the room in which the smell of preparation was most
powerful.
Though the half was drawing to its close, the evening board was
bountifully spread; for Forsyth's birthday had come off two days before,
and brought with it a token from home--a wicker token which the Lord
Mayor himself would not have despised. There was a ham, succulent
and tender; a tongue, fresh, not tinned, boiled, not stewed, of most
eloquent silence; a packet of sausages, a jar of marmalade, and, most
delicious of all, some potted shrimps. Harry knew, but did not tell, that
every one of those shrimps had been stripped of its shell by the hands
of Trix, who plumed herself, with unquestionable justice, upon her
shrimp-potting. Unfathomable is the depth of female devotion; fancy
any one being able to skin a shrimp, prawn, or walnut, and not eat it!
The shrimps, the sausages, were gone, the tongue was silent for ever,
but the ham and the marmalade remained.
The three friends were the oldest boys in the house, and almost in the
school. Two of them, Strachan and Kavanagh, were to leave at the end
of the half, and Forsyth was to do so after the next.
"Where's Kavanagh?" said the latter, coming into the room and sitting
down by the fire.
"At his tutor's," said Strachan; "he is bound to be in directly. Let the tea
brew a bit longer."
"It's uncommonly cold this evening; going to snow, I think. I hate snow
in February; there is no chance of real frost for skating, and it spoils the
football. Oh, here's Kavanagh."
The youth named strolled deliberately in at the moment, sat down at the
table, and began to shave off a slice of ham.

"Has the cold wind made you hungry, or has the effort to understand
that chorus in Euripides exhausted you?"
"I never try to understand what I firmly believe to have no meaning
whatever," drawled Kavanagh; "and I am never hungry. I consider it
bad form to be hungry; it shows that a fellow does not eat often enough.
Now the distinguishing mark of a gentleman is that he has too many
meals a day ever to feel hungry."
"I see; then you are only carving the ham for us."
"That does not exactly follow. Never jump to conclusions. A fire may
not actually require coals, yet you may put some on to keep it going; so
it is with a gentleman's stomach. You may take ham to appease hunger,
or you may take it to prevent the obtrusion of that vulgar sensation. Not
that I object to helping you fellows. The carving of ham is an art, a
fourpenny piece representing the maximum of thickness which the lean
should obtain. With a carving-knife and fork this ideal is not too easy
of attainment, but with these small blunt tools it requires a first-rate
workman to approach it. Now this slice, which I sacrifice on the altar of
friendship, is, I regret to say, fully as thick as a shilling."
At this moment a little boy, Kavanagh's fag, came into the room
bearing a muffin on a toasting-fork.
"Devereux!" said Kavanagh, severely, "do you know what Louis the
Fourteenth of France said when his carriage drew up, as he stepped
outside his front door?"
"No."
"He said, `I almost had to wait!' Now I, too, say to you that my tea is
poured out, my ham cut, and I almost had to wait. Not quite, happily
not quite, or the consequences to you would have been--terrible!"
The little boy did not look very frightened, in spite of the tone in which
the last word was uttered. Kavanagh had never been known wilfully to
hurt anything weaker than himself in his life. As he was tall and strong,

this is saying a great deal.
The two other fags grinned; one of them filled up the tea-pot, and then
Strachan said "Go!" and all three lower boys vanished in a twinkling to
prepare their own teas.
"We shall not