FullReads

It was on Christmas Eve, after a specially grand banquet off the contents of one of these hampers, that we crowded round the big common- hall fire in a very complacent frame of mind, uncommonly well satisfied and comfortable within and without.

“I don’t know,” said Lamb meditatively, cracking a walnut between his finger and thumb, and slowly skinning it–“I don’t know; Gilks might have done us a worse turn after all.”

“I rather wish he’d make a yearly thing of it,” said Ellis. “They say he’s pulled through all right.”

“Oh yes, he’s all right! and so are the other three. In fact, French and Addley never had scarlet fever at all. It was a false alarm.”

“Well,” said Lamb, “I’m jolly glad of it! I wouldn’t have cared for any of them to die, you know.”

Lamb said this in a tone as if we should all be rather surprised to hear him say so.

“Nobody ever did die at Ferriby, did they?” said Jim Sparrow, the youngest and tenderest specimen we had at Jolliffe’s.

It was rather cheek of a kid like Jim to interpose at all in a conversation of his seniors, and it seemed as if he was going to get snubbed by receiving no reply, when Fergus suddenly took the thing up.

“Eh, young Jim Sparrow, what’s that you’re saying?”

Fergus was the wag of our house–indeed, he was the only Irishman we could boast of, and the fact of his being an Irishman always made us inclined to laugh whenever he spoke. We could see now by the twinkle in his eye that he was going to let off the steam at Jim Sparrow’s expense.

“I said,” replied Jim, blushing rather to find every body listening to him, “nobody’s ever died at Ferriby, have they?”

Fergus gazed at him in astonishment.

“What!” exclaimed he, “you mean to say you never heard of poor Bubbles?”

“Bubbles? No,” replied Jim, looking rather scared.

“Just fancy that!” said Fergus, turning round to us; “never heard of Bubbles!”

Of course we, who saw what the wag was driving at, looked rather surprised and a little mysterious.

“What was it?” inquired Jim Sparrow, looking half ashamed of himself.

“Eh? Well, if you never heard it, I’d better not tell you. It’s not a nice story, is it, you fellows?”

“Horrible!” said Lamb, starting at another walnut.

“Oh, do tell me!” cried Jim eagerly, “I’m so fond of stories;” and he settled himself back in his chair rather uneasily, and tried to look as if it was all good fun.

“Well, if you do want it I’ll tell you; but don’t blame me if it upsets you, that’s all!” replied the irrepressible Fergus.

Jim looked as heroic as he could, and wished he had never asked to be enlightened on the subject of Bubbles.

Fergus refreshed himself with an orange, stuck his feet into the fender, and began in a solemn voice.

“I suppose, Jim Sparrow, if you have never heard about Bubbles, you really don’t know the history of the school at all. You don’t even know how it came to be called Ferriby?”

“No,” responded Jim, keeping his eyes on the fire.

“Ferriby is derived from two Anglo-Saxon words,” proceeded Fergus, “which you may have heard–`fire’ and `boy.’ Now I’ll tell you about Bubbles!”

There was something very mysterious about the manner in which Fergus uttered these words, and we listened for what was to come almost as breathlessly as Jim Sparrow.

“It was early in this century,” he said, “that a boy came to this school called Bubbles. No one knew where he came from. He had no parents, and never went home for the holidays. He was about your age, Sparrow, and just your build, and he was in the Lower Fourth.”

“I’m going to be moved up this Christmas,” interposed Jim hurriedly.

“Are you? So was Bubbles going to be moved up when what I’m going to tell you happened!”