Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/213

Office Boy (breathlessly). "Arioplane a-coming, Sir!"

Employer (strictly businesslike). "Take the chart and check it."

Coombes Minor was sitting on the hot-water pipes after prep. This is no need to rush off to bed nowadays, for Jagger, our beast of a house-prefect, does company drill in the gymnasium every night. It is a wonderful thing that Kitchener always picks out the decent prefects for coms. and gives the brutes a miss. We were just taking it out of young Lepping for swank. His brother is a casualty, so we were rotting Lepping by saying that he was not wounded by a German sniper, but kicked by a British army-mule when ten miles from the trenches. All at once Coombes Minor broke in, "You chaps don't take this war seriously enough. We want to be frightful, like the Germans." No doubt Coombes would have explained his plan, but just then young Lepping switched the light off and threw inkpots.

However, Combes began next morning when we went to old Giles. Old Giles is one of those polite beasts who always say "Good morning" when they come into the class-room, and then hand out the punishments wholesale. He said it this morning. Everyone but Coombes answered "Good morning," but Coombes said "Death to Germany."

"H'm," said old Giles; "Coombes is defying an empire of seventy millions. His defiance would be more impressive from an elevation. Stand on the form, Coombes, and write me out Delenda est Carthago five hundred times in detention."

Then we went to Newbold for Maths. Coombes preferred to spend his time writing a hymn of hate. He had got the first line done all right, but then he stuck. Second lines in poetry are horribly difficult. Well, Coombes had written, "I hate thee, William, oh, I hate," when Newbold collared his paper. Would you believe that Newbold took it as applying to himself? We always called hiin "Bodger," and I'm sure that Coombes never knew his name was William. Well, Newbold, thinking he was the only William in the world, reported Coombes to the Head for gross impertinence.

Coombes was so occupied thinking of trouble to come that he forgot all about his campaign till dinner. Now Progers, our housemaster, makes what he thinks is intelligent and elevating conversation at meal-times. The gravy gets like glue while he is dismembering Austria instead of the joint.

"If you please, Sir," said Coombes, "don't you think it would help the Empire if we used less bread and helped to pull prices down?"

Progers smiled and said, "I like your patriotic self-sacrifice, Coombes. We must preserve our stocks of flour. It seems to me that flour should be utilised in its most nutritious forms. Bread, for example, and not pastry. Do I understand that you purpose abstaining from apple-pie?"

"Yes, Sir," said Coombes, with a wild look in his eye. He confided to me afterwards that he felt convinced that Progers was a naturalised German. Nothing else could account for such treacherous conduct.

Then Coombes began to argue that we ought to give up our gold to the Government. I agreed, of course. The Government can have all my gold in mid-term and welcome. When it came to be settled it was found that the only gold in the form was Lepping's scarf-pin. We all thought it a grand idea, and we were wondering whether it would be safe to send it to Lloyd George (even if he has turned over a new leaf), or whether it had better go straight to Kitchener, when all at once someone noticed that Lopping was missing. Would you believe that he had slipped out to town and popped his scarf-pin for seven-and-six? Coombes said that Lapping was a traitor to the country and must be made to run the gauntlet, when old Progers came in and announced that Jagger, our beast of a house-prefect, had got his com. and was leaving that night. We gave three-times-three and a few more for Kitchener, and three very small cheers for Jagger. Lepping announced that what was left of the seven-and-six should be spent in a bedroom feast to celebrate the occasion. Then Coombes said that if Jagger was going against the Germans his "frightfulness" campaign was off. The Huns with Jagger on their track had his deepest sympathy.