The Duffer
by
What school is without its duffer, I wonder? Of course, none of us answer to the name, but we all know somebody who does, and it’s a curious thing nobody ever thoroughly dislikes a duffer. Why? Well, one reason may be that there’s nothing as a rule objectionable about such fellows, and another is that we are always ready enough to forgive one who makes us laugh; but I have an idea that the best reason why we are all so tolerant of duffers is that we are able to remind ourselves, when laughing at them, how very much the reverse of duffers we are ourselves.
However that may be, we had a glorious duffer at our school, who got himself and us into all sorts of scrapes, and yet was quite a favourite among his schoolfellows.
Billy Bungle (that was his name) was not by any means an idiot. He knew perfectly well that two and two made four, and yet, such a queer chap as he was, he would take any amount of pains to make five of it.
If there were two ways of doing anything, a right way and a wrong way, he invariably selected the latter; and if there seemed only one way, and that the right way, then he invented a wrong one for the occasion.
One day, one of the little boys in the school had a letter telling him to come home at once. He was not long in packing up his carpet bag, and getting the doctor’s leave to depart. But the doctor was unwilling for such a little helpless fellow as he to undertake the long journey all alone. He came down to the playground where we were, and beckoning to Billy, who happened to be the nearest at hand, said, “Bungle, will you go with this boy to the station, and see him off by the twelve train to X–? Here is the money to get his ticket; and carry his bag for him, there’s a man.”
Billy readily accepted the commission, and we watched him proudly marching from the playground with his small charge on one side and the carpet bag on the other. The station was a mile off, and it was nearly one o’clock when he returned home. We were in class at the time.
“Well, did you see him off?” asked the doctor.
“Yes, sir, all right; we caught an earlier train than the one you said– at a quarter to,” replied Billy, with the tone of a clever man.
“But the quarter to doesn’t go to X–. Didn’t I tell you to see him off by the twelve train?”
“I thought it would be all the better to catch the early one.”
“Stupid boy, don’t you know that train doesn’t go to X–?”
“No one said it didn’t, sir,” put in Billy, with an injured face.
“Did any one say it did?”
“I didn’t hear,” said Billy; “shall I go back and ask?”
“That would not be the least use,” said the master, too vexed almost to speak.
Billy stood before him, staring at him, and looking anything but cheerful.
“I shall have to go down to the station myself,” said the doctor. “You are the stupidest boy I ever had to do with.”
Billy looked resigned; then fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, he pulled out a bit of blue cardboard. “Oh, here’s the ticket, sir.”
“What! Wasn’t it enough to send the poor boy off by a wrong train, without keeping his ticket? Go away, sir, this instant, to your room, and stay there till I give you leave to quit it!”
Billy obeyed, evidently unable to make the affair out.
By dint of telegrams and messengers, the missing boy turned up again; but it was a long time before Billy was allowed to forget the way he had “seen him off.”