I pointed this out to Travers, who, though no friend of mine, always appeared to have more sense in a general way than most fellows; and he said—
"You sneer so at chaps. You always make it so jolly clear your hampers are the best in the world, that naturally they think you wouldn’t care about their things. Besides, Steggles did offer you three ripe pears, for I saw him do it."
"Yes," I said, "he did—just because he knew they were over-ripe and thought to score off me. I knew why he had done it, and told him so."
"Then he offered them to me," said Travers, "so I can tell you that you are quite wrong. I took them and ate them on the spot, and they were perfectly good, decent pears. For once in a way Steggles was quite straight and meant no harm at all."
Well, I saw after a bit that it wasn’t hampers, or anything of that sort; and then I thought it was games. But I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself at footling games for anybody, and I always did get out of them when I could. However, it wasn’t altogether games either, though certainly more games than hampers. Still, there were chaps who didn’t play games any better than me—such as Richards, who always went to matches and was keen about games, though useless himself, and Ford, who made peculiar knots in rope, and Jameson, who drew pictures in the chaps’ Latin grammars of the remarkable things mentioned in syntax. Then another great thing, showing what mean beasts most boys are, is the fact that if certain masters like certain boys, then other boys also like them.
Once, and only once, I got jolly friendly with a master who was very much disliked indeed by everybody else. I mean Browne. I never found him bad at first, and he used me a good bit in many ways and nearly always gave me full marks. But he changed frightfully over the business of the blackboard, and it happened like this. You see, as Browne thought well of me, he confided in me a bit out for walks; and I confided in him; and he asked me a lot of questions concerning a lot of boys; and, as I hated them all, I told him what he wanted to know. He was frightfully obliged and said I was a power for good in the school; and also said that such a boy as I am, without silly ideas about sneaking, may be of the greatest use to masters if he really has the welfare and interest of the school at heart. He also gave me a knife and seemed pretty sure I should win several prizes at the end of the term. In fact, we got very friendly and I certainly did him a very good turn by helping him to understand why some boys didn’t like him, and telling him what they said about him behind his back. He was greatly obliged to me, and used the things I told him, and scored pretty badly off some chaps as a result. It rather surprised them to find how much he knew; but it didn’t make them like him any better. Then they began to try and score off him, and finally, owing to an unfortunate accident, I got mixed up in it.