Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/58

 Carpenter. Now, Chips had witnessed just the bitter end of the scene in the quad, but Jan did not know he had been there at all.

"Oh, I don't exactly want anything. I can clear out if you'd rather, Rutter."

"All right. I'd rather." "Only I thought I'd tell you it's call-over on the Upper in half-an-hour."

"I'm not going to call-over."

"What?"

"Damn call-over!"

Carpenter winced: he did not like swearing, and he did like Rutter well enough to wince when he swore. But the spirit of the oath promptly blotted the letter from his mind. Carpenter was a law-abiding boy who had been a few terms at a good preparatory school; he could scarcely believe his ears, much less a word of Rutter's idle boast. Rutter certainly looked as though he meant it, with his closed lid of a mouth, and his sullen brooding eyes. But his mad intention was obviously not to be carried out.

"My dear man," said Carpenter, "it's one of the first rules of the school. Have you read them? You'd get into a frightful row!"

"The bigger the better."

"You might even get bunked," continued Chips, who was acquiring the school terminology as fast as he could, "for cutting call-over on purpose."

"Let them bunk me! Do you think I care? I never wanted to come here. I'd as soon've gone to prison. It can't be worse. At any rate they let you alone—they got to. But here . . . let them bunk me! It's the very thing I want. I loathe this hole, and everything about it. I don't care whether you say it's one of the best schools going, or what you say!"