The Hill | Page 4

another boy that he was at Damer's. John could have sworn that the hatter's assistant regarded the pink youth with increased deference. Why had Uncle John sent him to Dirty Dick's? He hurried out of the shop, fuming. Then he remembered the hammerless gun. After all, the Manor had been the house once, and it might be the house again.
By this time the boys were arriving. Groups were forming. Snatches of chatter reached John's ears. "Yes, I shot a stag, a nine-pointer. My governor is going to have it set up for me---- What? Walked up your grouse with dogs! We drive ours---- I had some ripping cricket, made a century in one match---- By Jove! Did you really?----"
John passed on. These were "bloods," tremendous swells, grown men with a titillating flavour of the world about their distinguished persons.
A minute later he was staring disconsolately at a group of his fellows just in front of Dir----of Rutford's side door. An impulse seized him to turn and flee. What would Uncle John say to that? So he advanced. The boys made way politely, asking no questions. As he passed through he caught a few eager words. "I was hoping that the brute had gone. It is a sickener, and no mistake!"
John ascended the battered, worn-out staircase, wondering who the "brute" was. Perhaps a sort of Flashman. John knew his Tom Brown; but some one had told him that bullying had ceased to be. Great emphasis had been laid on the "brute," whoever he might be.
Upon the second-floor passage, he found his room and one of its tenants, who nodded carelessly as John crossed the threshold.
"I'm Scaife," he said. "Are you the Lord, or the Commoner?" He laughed, indicating a large portmanteau, labelled, "Lord Esmé Kinloch."
"I'm Verney," said John.
"I've bagged the best bed," said Scaife, after a pause, "and I advise you to bag the next best one, over there. It was mine last term."
"I don't see the beds," said John, staring about him.
Scaife pointed out what appeared to be three tall, narrow wardrobes. The rest of the furniture included three much-battered washstands and chests of drawers, four Windsor chairs, and a square table, covered with innumerable inkstains and roughly-carved names.
"The beds let down," Scaife said, "and during the first school the maids make them, and shut them up again. It is considered a joke to crawl into another fellow's room at night, and shut him up. You find yourself standing upon your head in the dark, choking. It is a joke--for the other fellow."
"Did some one do that to you?" asked John.
"Yes; a big lout in the Third Fifth," Scaife smiled grimly.
"And what did you do?"
"I waited for him next day with a cricket stump. There was an awful row, because I let him have it a bit too hard; but I've not been shut up since. That bed is a beast. It collapses." He chuckled. "Young Kinloch won't find it quite as soft as the ones at White Ladies. Well, like the rest of us, he'll have to take Dirty Dick's as he finds it."
The bolt had fallen.
John asked in a quavering voice, "Then it is called that?"
"Called what?"
"This house. Dirty Dick's!"
Scaife smiled cynically. He looked about a year older than John, but he had the air and manners of a man of the world--so John thought. Also, he was very good-looking, handsomer than Desmond, and in striking contrast to that smiling, genial youth, being dark, almost swarthy of complexion, with strongly-marked features and rather coarse hands and feet.
"Everybody here calls it Dirty Dick's," he replied curtly.
John stared helplessly.
"But," he muttered, "I heard, I was told, that the Manor was the best house in the school."
"It used to be," Scaife answered. "To-day, it comes jolly near being the worst. The fellows in other houses are decent; they don't rub it in; but, between ourselves, the Manor has gone to pot ever since Dirty Dick took hold of it. Damer's is the swell house now."
John began to unstrap his portmanteau. Scaife puzzled him. For instance, he displayed no curiosity. He did not put the questions always asked at a Preparatory School. Without turning his thought into words, John divined that at Harrow it was bad form to ask questions. As he wanted to ask a question, a very important question, this enforced silence became exasperating.
Presently Scaife said, "I suppose you are one of the Claydon lot."
"No; my home is in the New Forest. My uncle is Verney of Verney Boscobel."
"Oh! his name is on the panels at the head of the staircase; and it's carved on a bed in the next room."
"Crikey! I must go and look at it."
"You can look at the panels, of course; but don't say 'Crikey!' and don't go into the next room. Two Fifth Form fellows