The Elderbrook Brothers by Gerald Bullet Page B

there.
    â€˜Yes, and French too,’ said Felix. ‘I’m going to swot up my first conjugation during the hols.’
    It was impossible that Felix should not feel his importance a little. But though not every school had ‘hols’—the Upmarden children had to make the best of mere holidays—he was guiltless of consciously exhibiting his new lingo. Guiltless? Well, nearly.
    â€˜Have you brought books and things back with you?’ Guy asked.
    â€˜Yes, I’ll show you if you like,’ said Felix. ‘Rather a fag, but still. It’s awfully dry sort of stuff, Latin.’
    â€˜I expect it is,’ said Guy enviously.
    As the holidays wore on the strangeness wore off, and the old relationship was all but restored when the summer term arrived to cut it short again. It was during this next term, and on a Saturday evening of all times, that Mr Cowlin, on his way home from The Two Shoes at By-End Corner, chanced upon a strange and portentous sight: a boy, under no visible compulsion, reading a book. His astonishment was not diminished when upon coming closer he recognized the boy as Guy Elderbrook. Guy too was taken by surprise. The last person he expected to have peering in at him over the field gate was Mr Cowlin.
    â€˜Well, Guy?’ said Mr Cowlin, coming to a halt.
    He had had a whisky or two and was feeling sociable. He was a neighbour as well as the schoolmaster. He believed himself to be not a bad fellow at heart, and not actively disliked by the children, and in this belief he was justified. Not so well founded was the consolatory notion that however little the young wretches learnt, however indifferent they might be to the intellectual fare offered them, he was doing his duty so long as a semblance of outward discipline was maintained. That certain prize pupils should be capable of reciting the Capes of Europe, a list of dates beginning with 1066, sundry tables of weights and measures, and a few of the simpler axioms of Euclid, was gratifying proof that they had mastered geography, history, and mathematics. As for the others, it was enough if they refrained, in class, from eating, conversing, kicking and pinching each other, giggling, wilfully coughing, making rude oral noises, putting out derisive tongues, spilling ink, carrying white mice in their pockets, releasing specimens of the local fauna at inconvenient moments (spiders and beetles from matchboxes, young frogs from caps and dirty handkerchiefs), and too frequently adopting the subterfuge of saying ‘May I leave the room, please?’ That these activities should be kept in check,that every male child should be addressed by its surname and affix the word ‘sir’ to its answers: this was discipline. Outside school, however, one could unbend. One could, for example, address young Elderbrook as Guy.
    â€˜Improving the shining hour?’ said Mr Cowlin.
    Shining the hour was. A beautiful evening, warm and still young. But the question seemed to need no answer, and Guy did not offer one. He made no verbal response at all, but merely grinned, bashfully, and with a hasty movement pushed his book out of sight.
    â€˜I can see you have a piece of literature there,’ said Mr Cowlin. ‘Some mighty product of the human intellect, no doubt. A pennyworth of blood and thunder, eh?’ He extended his hand commandingly. ‘Show me.’
    Neither he nor Guy could question his right to pry. It was established by long custom, part of the accepted order of things. Evasion and trickery were possible, and were often practised, but direct disobedience was a thing seldom even thought of.
    The book changed hands.
    â€˜Dear me!’ said Mr Cowlin, turning its pages. ‘A Latin primer. So this is how you spend your leisure hours, my young friend?’
    He began, by force of habit, in a spirit of genial sarcasm, but ended in sheer wonderment. The surprise was too much. The rebuke sobered him. It dammed up his