Tell England | Page 9

chair, putting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, as though that were a comely Norman attitude, "a pure Norman, but I don't know how my hair got so dark, and my eyes such a spiffing brown."
"What am I?" I interrupted, as introducing a subject of more immediate interest.
"You, Ray? Oh, you're a Saxon. Your name's Rupert, you see, and you've blue eyes and a fair skin, and all that rot."
I was quite satisfied with being a pure Saxon, and left Doe to his examination.
"What am I?" he eagerly asked, offering his oval face and parted lips for scrutiny.
"You? Oh, Saxon, with a dash of Southern blood. Brown eyes, you see, and that sloppy milk-and-coffee skin. And there's a dash of Viking in you--that's your fair hair. Adulterated Saxon you are."
At this Doe loudly protested that he was a pure Saxon, a perfect Cornish Saxon from the banks of the Fal.
Penny always discouraged precocious criticism, so he replied:
"I'm not arguing with you, my child."
"_You?_ Who are you?"
Penny let his thumbs go further into his armholes, and assured us with majestic suavity:
"I? I'm Me."
"No, you're not," snapped Doe. "You're not me. I'm me."
"Well, you're neither of you me," interrupted the third fool in the room. "I'm me. So sucks!"
"Now you two boys," began our stately patron, "don't you begin dictating to me. Once and for all, Doe is Doe, Ray is Ray, and I'm Me. Why, by Jove! Doe-Ray-Me! It's a joke; and I'm a gifted person."
This discovery of the adaptability of our names was so startling that I exclaimed:
"Good Lord! How mad!"
Penny only shrugged his shoulders, and generally plumed himself on his little success. And Doe said:
"Has that only just dawned on you?"
"Observe," sneered Penny. "The Gray Doe is jealous. He would like the fame of having made this fine jest. So he pretends he thought of it long ago. He bags it."
"Not worth bagging," suggested Doe, who was pulling a lock of his pale hair over his forehead, and trying with elevated eye-brows to survey it critically. His feet were resting on a seat in front of him, and his trousers were well pulled up, so as to show a certain tract of decent sock. Penny scanned him as though his very appearance were nauseating.
"Well, why did you bag it?"
"I didn't."
"I say, you're a bit of a liar, aren't you?"
"Well, if I'm a bit of a liar, you're a lot of one."
"My dear little boy," said Penny, with intent to hurt, "we all know the reputation for lying you had at your last school."
As we had all been at Kensingtowe's Preparatory School together, I was in a position to know that this was rather wild, and remonstrated with him.
"I say, that's a bit sticky, isn't it?"
The nobility of my interference impressed me as I made it. Meanwhile the angry blood mounted to Doe's face, but he carelessly replied:
"You show what a horrible liar you are by your last remark. I never said your beastly idea was mine; and because you accused me of doing so, and I said I didn't, you call me a liar: which is a dirty lie, if you like. But of course one expects lies from you."
"That may be," rejoined Pennybet. "But you know you don't wash."
Doe parried this thrust with a sarcastic acquiescence.
"No, I know I don't--never did--don't believe in washing."
Now Penny was out to hurt. A mere youngster had presumed to argue and be cheeky with him: and discipline must be maintained. To this end there must be punishment; and punishment, to be effective, must hurt. So he adopted a new line, and with his clever strategy strove to enlist my support by deigning to couple my name with his.
"At any rate," he drawled, "Ray and I don't toady to Radley."
This poisonous little remark requires some explanation. Mr. Radley, the assistant house-master at Bramhall House, was a hard master, who would have been hated for his insufferable conceptions of discipline, had he not been the finest bat in the Middlesex team. Just about this time there was a libel current that he made a favourite of Edgar Doe because he was pretty. "Doe," I had once said, "Radley's rather keen on you, isn't he?" And Doe had turned red and scoffed: "How absolutely silly--but, I say, do you really think so?" Seeing that he found pleasure in the insinuation, I had followed it up with chaff, upon which he had suddenly cut up rough, and left me in a pique.
This morning, as Penny pricked him with this poisoned fang, Doe began to feel that for the moment he was alone amongst us three; and odd-man-out. He put a tentative question to me, designed to see whether I were siding with him or with the foe.
"Now, Ray, isn't that the dirtiest lie he's