IS real name was Cyprian Langsdyke, but that would have struck anyone as being far too much of a name for the boy. He had a quaint Chinese look, due to his bright, narrow eyes, and in consequence he was generally known at Desford as The Celestial. He was much more athletic than he looked; was reputed to be clever but whimsical, and known to be unruly. He was in the fifth, and just at present he was in a bad temper, for things had been going exceedingly wrong with The Celestial.
He was seated on the stack of hot-water pipes in the hall of the School House. At his back were the screens on which school notices were posted. Around him were certain sympathetic friends. The Celestial had just expressed, in simple language, a wish that he was dead, and had been asked for his reasons.
"I never get any luck nowadays; look at that." He pointed to a football list on the screens. "Peter Hill playing half in my place, and me stuck in the scrum. Oh, yes, I'd expected that. I shall be kicked out altogether, to-morrow; that's a bit of Tommy Hill's captaining, that is. I knew he'd give Peter a lift; I wonder he hasn't asked his blooming mother to play. However, I don't want any favoring; I want ordinary justice—not family influence, but ordinary justice. And you don't get that from Tommy Hill, nor from the old man, nor from Henry Reginald Liggers, M. A.—more especially Liggers. I have had a day with Liggers. I was about two seconds late for morning prep.—row with Liggers. Then, when we got to work, I saw that fat-head Smithson asleep on the other side of the table. So I spilt my ink, calculating that, the way the table sloped, it would run across and pour over Smithson, and wake him up. Liggers copped me; he didn't even take the trouble to ask why I'd spilt it—simply a hundred Greek with accents. Going in to breakfast, I had a slight accident, and fell up against Liggers, and he called me a clumsy lout. Morning school, he made me construe three-quarters of the Livy all to my own cheek, and never put on Douglas, nor Banks, nor that fat-head Smithson at all; finding he couldn't kill me on the Livy, he tore up my prose and told me to do it again. In the afternoon at footer he amused himself by scragging me, and hacking me, and saying I was off-side when I wasn't."
"He can't play much," said Banks, meaning to be sympathetic, but speaking inadvisedly.
"You complete chump!" replied The Celestial, scornfully. "Of course he can play. He captained his college team, and he's better than any of the other masters by a long chalk. There's no sense in saying that he can't play footer, but he spites me. Coming up from footer, he saw me come out of Hunley's, so he said: 'You're always in there, Langsdyke, eating buns and chocolate, and trash of that kind; you'll ruin your wind.' I wasn't going to explain to him, but, as a matter of fact, I hadn't been eating anything. I'd just had four bottles of ginger beer, and that was all—not another thing. Then in afternoon school he sent me out of the room for blowing my nose."
The Smithson to whom The Celestial had made uncomplimentary allusions giggled reminiscently. "I own it made a row," continued The Celestial, with an air of judicial fairness. "I don't deny it; but I didn't do it on purpose. I never know when it's going to make that row and when it isn't. And now it's Liggers's prep., and I'm bound to get dropped on again. Don't I wish I was in the sixth, and had a study to myself? You can get your work done in three-quarters of an hour, and then you have the other half of prep, all to yourself, to read novels in. It's beastly working in that day-room with Liggers or some other master looking on all the time. You don't get a chance to—to do anything. However, if Liggers is going to be rough on me, I'll be rough on him. There's the prep, bell; so now for breezes!"
The little group dispersed. During preparation that night there were more than breezes—there were hurricanes. The Celestial retired to his cubicle at ten resigned and philosophical. There were two big dormitories in the School House at Desford, each containing twenty cubicles. The partitions which formed the cubicles were about seven feet high, and did not nearly reach to the ceiling, so conversation was possible, and was permitted until the lights were put out at half-past ten.
"I'm going to give up being hard on Liggers," remarked The Celestial from his cubicle to the rest of the lower dormitory. "It's played out. A master can call you an idiot, and you can't call him anything back again; so he has the bulge. It's no use being at war with Liggers. I'm going on a different line."