Ch. 5: The Moral Reformers - Page 2

"How d'you know?" The Reverend John was smiling.

"We've been here nearly six years now. There are precious few things
about the Coll. we don't know," Stalky replied. "Why, even you came
the term after I did, sir. I remember your asking our names in form
your first lesson. Mr. King, Mr. Prout, and the Head, of course, are
the only masters senior to us--in that way."

"Yes, we've changed a good deal--in Common-room."

"Huh!" said Beetle with a grunt. "They came here, an' they went away
to get married. Jolly good riddance, too!"

"Doesn't our Beetle hold with matrimony?"

"No, Padre; don't make fun of me. I've met chaps in the holidays
who've got married house-masters. It's perfectly awful! They have
babies and teething and measles and all that sort of thing right bung
_in_ the school; and the masters' wives give
tea-parties--tea-parties, Padre!--and ask the chaps to breakfast."

"That don't matter so much," said Stalky. "But the house-masters let
their houses alone, and they leave everything to the prefects. Why,
in one school, a chap told me, there were big baize doors and a
passage about a mile long between the house and the master's house.
They could do just what they pleased."

"Satan rebuking sin with a vengeance."

"Oh, larks are right enough; but you know what we mean, Padre. After a
bit it gets worse an' worse. Then there's a big bust-up and a row
that gets into the papers, and a lot of chaps are expelled, you
know."

"Always the wrong un's; don't forget that. Have a cup of cocoa,
Padre?" said McTurk with the kettle.

"No, thanks; I'm smoking. Always the wrong 'uns? Pro-ceed, my
Stalky."

"And then"--Stalky warmed to the work--"everybody says, 'Who'd ha'
thought it? Shock-in' boys! Wicked little kids!' It all comes of
havin' married house-masters, _I_ think."

"A Daniel come to judgment."

"But it does," McTurk interrupted. "I've met chaps in the holidays,
an' they've told me the same thing. It looks awfully pretty for one's
people to see--a nice separate house with a nice lady in charge, an'
all that. But it isn't. It takes the house-masters off their work,
and it gives the prefects a heap too much power, an'--an'--it rots up
everything. You see, it isn't as if we were just an ordinary school.
We take crammers' rejections as well as good little boys like Stalky.
We've got to do that to make our name, of course, and we get 'em into
Sandhurst somehow or other, don't we?"

"True, O Turk. Like a book thou talkest, Turkey."