'Not if you make haste,' said the boy, eagerly.
Mark was rather flattered by this confidence in his persuasive powers: he liked the idea, too, of posing as the protector of his class, and the good-natured element in him made him the readier to yield.
'Well, we'll have a shot at it, Langton,' he said. 'I doubt if it's much good, you know, but here goes—when you get in, hold your tongue and keep in the background—leave it to me.'
So they went out into the long passage with its whitewashed walls and rows of doors on each side, and black barrel-vaulting above; at the end the glimmer of light came through the iron bars of the doorway, which had a prison-like suggestion about them, and the reflectors of the unlighted gas lamps that projected here and there along the corridor gave back the glimmer as a tiny spark in the centre of each metal disc.
Mark stopped at the door of the Upper Fourth Classroom, which was Mr. Shelford's, and went in. It was a plain room, not unlike his own, but rather smaller; it had a daïs with a somewhat larger desk for the master, and a different arrangement of the benches and lockers, but it was quite as gloomy, with an outlook into a grim area giving a glimpse of the pavement and railings above.
Mr. Shelford was evidently just going, for as they came in he had put a very large hat on the back of his head, and was winding a long grey comforter round his throat; but he took off the hat courteously as he saw Mark. He was a little old man, with a high brick-red colour on his smooth, scarcely wrinkled cheeks, a big aquiline nose, a wide thin-lipped mouth, and sharp little grey eyes, which he cocked sideways at one like an angry parrot.
Langton retired to a form out of hearing, and sat down on one end of it, nursing his detention paper anxiously.
'Well, Ashburn,' began the Reverend James Shelford, 'is there anything I can do for you?'
'Why,' said Mark, 'the fact is, I——'
'Eh, what?' said the elder. 'Wait a minute—there's that impident fellow back again! I thought I'd seen the last of him. Here, you sir, didn't I send you up for a flogging?'
'I—I believe you did, sir,' said Langton with extreme deference.
'Well, why ain't you getting that flogging—eh, sir? No impidence, now—just tell me, why ain't you being flogged? You ought to be in the middle of it now!'
'Well, you see,' said Mark, 'he's one of my boys——'
'I don't care whose boy he is,' said the other, testily; 'he's an impident fellow, sir.'
'I don't think he is, really,' said Mark.
'D'ye know what he did, then? Came whooping and shouting and hullabalooing into my room, for all the world as if it was his own nursery, sir. He's always doing it!'
'I never did it before,' protested Langton, 'and it wasn't my fault this time.'
'Wasn't your fault! You haven't got St. Vitus' dance, have you? I never heard there were any Tarantula spiders here. You don't go dancing into the Doctor's room, do you? He'll give you a dancing lesson!' said the old gentleman, sitting down again to chuckle, and looking very like Mr. Punch.
'No, but allow me,' put in Mark; 'I assure you this boy is——'
'I know what you're going to tell me—he's a model boy, of course. It's singular what shoals of model boys do come dancing in here under some irresistible impulse after school. I'll put a stop to it now I've caught one. You don't know 'em as well as I do, sir, you don't know 'em—they're all impident and all liars—some are cleverer at it than others, and that's all.'
'I'm afraid that's true enough,' said Mark, who did not like being considered inexperienced.
'Yes, it's cruel work having to do with boys, sir—cruel and thankless. If ever I try to help a boy in my class I think is trying to get on and please me, what does he do? Turn round and play me some scurvy trick, just to prove to the others he's not currying favour. And then they insult me—why, that very boy has been and shouted "Shellfish" through my keyhole many a time, I'll warrant!'
'I think you're mistaken,' said Mark, soothingly.
'You do? I'll ask him. Here, d'ye mean to tell me you never called out "Shellfish" or—or other opprobrious epithets into my door, sir?' And he inclined his ear for the answer with his eyes fixed on the boy's face.
'Not "Shellfish,"' said the boy; 'I did "Prawn" once. But that was long ago.'
Mark gave him up then, with a little contempt for such injudicious candour.
'Oh!' said Mr. Shelford, catching him, but not ungently, by the ear. '"Prawn," eh? "Prawn"; hear that, Ashburn? Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me why "Prawn"?'
A natural tendency of the youthful mind to comparative physiology had discovered a fancied resemblance which justified any graceful personalities of this kind; but Langton probably felt that candour had its limits, and that this was a question that required judgment in dealing with it.
'Because—because I've heard other fellows call you that,' he replied.
'Ah, and why do they call me Prawn, eh?'
'I never heard them give any reason,' said the boy, diplomatically.
Mr. Shelford let the boy go with another chuckle, and Langton retired to his form again out of earshot.
'Yes, Ashburn,' said old Jemmy, 'that's the name they have for me—one of 'em. "Prawn" and "Shellfish"—they yell it out after me as I'm going home, and then run away. And I've had to bear it thirty years.'
'Young ruffians!' said Mark, as if the sobriquets were wholly unknown to the masters' room.
'Ah, they do though; and the other day, when my monitor opened the desk in the morning, there was a great impident kitten staring me in the face. He'd put it in there himself, I dare say, to annoy me.'
He did not add that he had sent out for some milk for the intruder, and had nursed it on his old knees during morning school, after which he showed it out with every consideration for its feelings; but it was the case nevertheless, for his years amongst boys had still left a soft place in his heart, though he got little credit for it.
'Yes, it's a wearing life, sir, a wearing life,' he went on with less heat, 'hearing generations of stoopid boys all blundering at the same stiff places, and worrying over the same old passages. I'm getting very tired of it; I'm an old man now. "Occidit miseros crambe"—eh, you know how it goes on?'
'Yes, yes,' said Mark, 'quite so,'—though he had but a dim recollection of the line in question.
'Talking of verses,' said the other, 'I hear we're to have the pleasure of seeing one of your productions on Speech-night this year. Is that so?'
'I was not aware anything was settled,' said Mark, flushing with pleasure. 'I did lay a little thing of my own, a sort of allegorical Christmas piece—a masque, don't you know—before the Doctor and the Speeches Committee, but I haven't heard anything definite yet.'
'Oh, perhaps I'm premature,' said Mr. Shelford; 'perhaps I'm premature.'
'Do you mind telling me if you've heard anything said about it?' asked Mark, thoroughly interested.
'I did hear some talk about it in the luncheon hour. You weren't in the room, I believe, but I think they were to come to a decision this afternoon.'
'Then it will be all over by now,' said Mark; 'there may be a note on my desk about it. I—I think I'll go and see, if you'll excuse me.'
And he left the room hastily, quite forgetting his original purpose in entering: something much more important to him than whether a boy should be flogged or not, when he had no doubt richly deserved it, was pending just then, and he could not rest until he knew the result.
For Mark had always longed for renown of some sort, and for the last few years literary distinction