The Elderbrook Brothers Read Online Free PDF Page B

him an entirely silly person.
    His ingenuous question went unregarded, for at that moment a diversion occurred in the neighbourhood of the wash-basins. Someone began forcibly feeding someone else with pellets of soap. There were yells of protest; splutterings, scufflings, hootings; and much laughter.
    A commanding unknown voice suddenly made itself heard above the din. But it was not, alas, the voice of a master.
    â€˜New boys, forward! Time for medicine!’
    Taking one thing with another, Felix wished he were home again.
§ 6
    GUY wished so too. Since the day when Felix first began to crawl these two had spent most of their time together. Together they explored and re-explored the fields and lanes of home, except when they were at school, or messing about in the yard, or rat-hunting in barn and granary, or bouncing a: rubber ball against the north-east wall of the farmhouse.’ And when they were doing none of these things they were leading horses, fetching the cows in, singling swedes, turning hay, counting sheep through a gate. They lived each moment as it came, never looking beyond tomorrow; and much of their life in common was lived against a background of agreed fantasy. But now Felix was gone. Those special private games were finished, the shared story in bed was a thing of the past, and Guy went to the village school alone.
    Mr Cowlin, the schoolmaster, was a grey, lean man, with the face of a not unamiable wolf. The skin of his sunken cheeks, which had once been plump, hung slackly upon his bones, likeleather purses empty of coin. If he had ever had any enthusiasm for teaching young children, it was so long ago that his mind held no memory of it; and if his heart had ever entertained vanity, which is the lesser part of ambition, the only trace of it left to him now, at the age of fifty-four, was to be found in the curious pretence, to which he secretly and precariously clung, that he could have been, had it pleased him to take the necessary trouble, a person of some little consequence in the world. In his leisure hours, which were all too numerous, he dabbled very gently and idly in the history of the parish and sometimes toyed with the idea of writing a book on it. He had once or twice thought he would marry, but the project had always died of indecision. He was never noticeably drunk, but as he grew older he became more and more dependent on little nips.
    A day or two after the beginning of term Mr Cowlin turned suddenly from the blackboard, chalk in hand, to discover that of the boys, Guy Elderbrook, was conspicuously not attending.
    â€˜A-a-a-ah!’
    Having uttered a strange noise, half bleat, half battle-cry, he twisted his face into a shape of great ferocity, lifted a long arm, and hurled his chalk across the schoolroom: and with so vile an aim that it struck the forehead of a little girl sitting a yard and a half to the right of the offender. The stricken child promptly set up a wailing.
    â€˜For pity’s sake hold your noise!’ Mr Cowlin entreated. ‘And you, G. Elderbrook, pay attention to the blackboard or I’ll dust the seat of your breeks!’
    The threat lacked conviction. Mr Cowlin possessed a cane, and often used it: but seldom on the persons of his pupils, preferring to strike his desk with it at unexpected moments, or to brandish it eloquently in the air, as a symbol of the wrath to come.
    â€˜What do you suppose I’m doing at this blackboard, eh?’
    â€˜I don’t know, sir,’ said Guy.
    â€˜I’m writing upon it, am I not? Do I do that for my own pleasure, think you?’
    â€˜I don’t know, sir.’
    â€˜For my own pleasure or for your instruction, boy? Which is it, I wonder?’
    Answering at random Guy said again: ‘I don’t know, sir.’
    â€˜You don’t know, sir. You don’t know, sir. Then what in the wide world
do
you know, sir?’ cried Mr Cowlin, in accents of affected wonder.
    â€˜Nothing,