Glyn Severns Schooldays | Page 4

a dreadful old tyrant for keeping you slaving away at your classics and mathematics, because you recollect the work that you are often so unwilling to do, while the hours I give you for play quite slip your minds. Now, this is my invariable rule, that you shall do everything well: work hard when it's work, and play hard when it's play."
The two lads, Glyn Severn and his companion of many years, Aziz Singh, a dark English boy in appearance and speech, but maharajah in his own right over a powerful principality in Southern India, strolled right away over the grass to the extreme end of the Doctor's extensive grounds, chatting together as boys will talk about the incidents of the morning.
"Oh," cried the Indian lad angrily, "I wish you hadn't stopped me. I was just ready."
"Why, what did you want to do, Singhy?" cried the other.
"Fight," said the boy, with his eyes flashing and his dark brows drawn down close together.
"Oh, you shouldn't fight directly after breakfast," said Glyn Severn, laughing good-humouredly.
"Why not?" cried the other fiercely. "I felt just then as if I could kill him."
"Then I am glad I lugged you away."
"But you shouldn't," cried the young Indian. "You nearly made me hit you."
"You had better not," said Glyn, laughing merrily.
"Yes, of course; I know, and I don't want to."
"That's right; and you mustn't kill people in England because you fall out with them."
"No, of course not; I know that too. But I don't like that boy. He keeps on saying nasty things to us, and--and--what do you call it? I know--bullies you, and says insulting things to me. How dare he call me a nigger and say my father was a mahout?"
"The insulting brute!" said Glyn.
"Why should he do it?" cried Singh.
"Oh, it's plain enough. It's because he is big and strong, and he wants to pick a quarrel with us."
"But what for?" cried Singh. "We never did him any harm."
"Love of conquest, I suppose, so as to make us humble ourselves to him same as the other fellows do. He wants to be cock of the school."
"Oh--oh!" cried Singh. "It does make me feel so hot. What did he say to me: was I going to ride on the elephant?--Yes. Well, suppose I was. It wouldn't be the first time."
"Not by hundreds," cried Glyn. "I say, used it not to be grand? Don't you wish we were going over the plains to-day on the back of old Sultan?"
He pronounced it Sool-tann.
"Ah, yes!" cried Singh, with his eyes flashing now. "I do, I do! instead of being shut up in this old school to be bullied by a boy like that. I should like to knock his head off."
"No, you wouldn't. There, don't think anything more about it. He isn't worth your notice."
"No, I suppose not," said the Indian boy;--"but what makes me so angry is that he despises me, and has treated me ever since we came here as if I were his inferior. It is not the first time he has called me a nigger.--There, I won't think anything more about it. Tell me, what's this grand procession to-day? Is it to be like a durbar at home, when all the rajahs and nawabs come together with their elephants and trains?"
"Oh, no, no, no!" cried Glyn, laughing. "Nothing of the kind."
"Then, why are they making all this fuss? It said on the bills we saw yesterday in the town, `Ramball's Wild-Beast Show. Grand Procession.'"
"I don't know much about it," said Glyn; "only here in England in country places they make a great fuss over things like this. I asked Wrench yesterday, and he said that this was a menagerie belonging to a man who lives near and keeps his wild-beasts at a big farm-like place just outside the town."
"But why a procession?" said Singh impatiently.
"Oh, he takes them all round the country, going from town to town, and they are away for months, and now they are coming back."
"Menagerie! beast show!" said Singh thoughtfully. "They are all tame, of course?"
"Yes, of course," said Glyn. "It said lions and tigers and elephants and camels, and a lot more things on the bills. I should like to see them."
"You English are a wonderful people. My father used to have tigers-- three of them--a tiger, a tigress, and a nearly full-grown cub. But they were so fierce he got tired of keeping them, and when the tigress killed one of the keepers, you remember, he asked your father about it, and they settled that it would be best to kill them."
"Of course, I remember," said Glyn; "and they had a tiger-hunt, and let one out at a time, and had beaters to drive them out of the nullahs, and shot all three."
"Yes," said Singh thoughtfully; "and my