FullReads

It is the same in games as in the class-room. If he is beaten in a race, it is because he has slipped in starting; if he is clean bowled first ball at cricket, it is because there was a lump in the grass just where the ball pitched; if he lets the enemy’s halfback pass him at football, it is because he made sure Perkins had collared him– otherwise, of course, he would have won the race, made top score at the wickets, and saved his goal. As it happens, he does neither.

There is a touch of dishonesty in this, though perhaps Tim does not intend it. Why cannot he own he is “out of it” now and then? His fellows would respect him far more and laugh at him far less; he would gain far more than he lost, besides having the satisfaction of knowing he had not tried to deceive anybody. But I sometimes think, when Tim makes his absurd excuses, he really believes what he says; just as the ostrich, when he buries his head in the sand, really believes he is hidden from the sight of his pursuers.

It is natural in human nature not to relish the constant admission of error or failure. Who of us is not glad to feel at times (even if we do not say it) that “it’s not our fault”? The person who is always making little of himself, and never admitting what small merit he might fairly claim, is pretty much the same sort of deception as Tim, and we despise him almost as much. We would all of us, in fact (and what wonder?) like to be “always right,” and perhaps our tendency is to let the wish become father to the thought rather too often.

But to return to Timothy. Nothing, of course, could astonish him; nothing was ever news to him; nothing could evoke his applause. “Tim,” perhaps some one would say, “do you know old Grinder (the head master) is going to be married, and we are to get a week extra holiday?”

“Ah,” says Tim, to whom this is all news, “I always thought there was something of the kind up. For my own part, I thought we should get a fortnight extra.”

“Buck made a good jump yesterday, Tim,” says another. “Five feet and half an inch.”

“Sure it wasn’t three-quarters of an inch?” is Tim’s provoking answer.

Of all irritating things, perhaps the most irritating is to have your big bundle of news calmly opened and emptied, and its contents appropriated without scruple or acknowledgment.

Tim this very day has the gratification of amazing half the school with the news of Dr Grinder’s approaching marriage and the consequent extra holidays, and of seeing the enthusiastic astonishment of others to whom he retails the latest achievement of the athletic Buck.

But he did not always come off so easily. Once he was made the victim of a joke which, in any one less self-satisfied, might have effectually checked his foolish propensity. It was a wet day, and the boys were all assembled in the big play-room, not knowing exactly what to do, and ready for the first bit of fun which might turn up.

“Couldn’t somebody draw Tim out?” one of us whispered.

The idea caught like wildfire, and after a brief pause Tidswell, the monitor, said, amid the hushed attention of the company–

“By the way, Tim, wasn’t that a queer account of the sea-serpent in the paper the other day?”

“Awfully queer,” replied the unsuspecting Tim; “I didn’t know you had seen it.”

“Fancy a beast a mile and a half long from head to tail!”

“It’s a good size,” said Tim, “but nothing out of the common for a sea- serpent, you know.”

“Now I come to think of it, though,” said Tidswell, “it didn’t say that the serpent was a mile and a half long; it was a mile and a half from the ship when it was seen, wasn’t that it?”