Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling (young adult books to read .txt) đ
- Author: Rudyard Kipling
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The visitors gasped, but Stalky interpreted the parable with large grins.
âWell, you know, that little beast Manders minor saw Beetle and me hammerinâ McTurkâs trunk open in the dormitory when we took his watch last month. Of course Manders sneaked to Mason, and Mason solemnly took it up as a case of theft, to get even with us about the rats.â
âThat just put Mason into our giddy hands,â said McTurk, blandly. âWe were nice to him, because he was a new master and wanted to win the confidence of the boys. âPity he draws inferences, though. Stalky went to his study and pretended to blub, and told Mason heâd lead a new life if Mason would let him off this time, but Mason wouldnât. âSaid it was his duty to report him to the Head.â
âVindictive swine!â said Beetle. âIt was all those rats! Then I blubbed, too, and Stalky confessed that heâd been a thief in regular practice for six years, ever since he came to the school; and that Iâd taught himâala_ Fagin. Mason turned white with joy. He thought he had us on toast.â
âGorgeous! Gorgeous!â said Dick Four. âWe never heard of this.â
ââCourse not. Mason kept it jolly quiet. He wrote down all our statements on impot-paper. There wasnât anything he wouldnât believe,â said Stalky.
âAnd handed it all up to the Head, with an extempore prayer. It took about forty pages,â said Beetle. âI helped him a lot.â
âAnd then, you crazy idiots?â said Abanazar.
âOh, we were sent for; and Stalky asked to have the âdepositionsâ read out, and the Head knocked him spinning into a waste-paper basket. Then he gave us eight cuts apieceâweltersâforâforâtakinâ unheard-of liberties with a new master. I saw his shoulders shaking when we went out. Do you know,â said Beetle, pensively, âthat Mason canât look at us now in second lesson without blushing? We three stare at him sometimes till he regularly trickles. Heâs an awfully sensitive beast.â
âHe read âEric, or Little by Little,ââ said McTurk; âso we gave him âSt. Winifredâs, or the World of School.â They spent all their spare time stealing at St. Winifredâs, when they werenât praying or getting drunk at pubs. Well, that was only a week ago, and the Headâs a little bit shy of us. He called it constructive deviltry. Stalky invented it all.â
âNot the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an ass of him,â said Stalky, extended at ease on the hearth-rug. âIf Mason didnât know Number Fiveâwell, heâs learnt, thatâs all. Now, my dearly beloved âearersââStalky curled his legs under him and addressed the companyââweâve got that strongâ, perseverinâ man King on our hands. He went miles out of his way to provoke a conflict.â (Here Stalky snapped down the black silk domino and assumed the air of a judge.) âHe has oppressed Beetle, McTurk, and me, privatimet_seriatim_, one by one, as he could catch us. But now, he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of theseâthese ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry âCapivi!ââ
Stalkyâs reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.
âAnd, besides,â said McTurk, âheâs a Philistine, a basket-hanger. He wears a tartan tie. Ruskin says that any man who wears a tartan tie will, without doubt, be damned everlastingly.â
âBravo, McTurk,â said Tertius; âI thought he was only a beast.â
âHeâs that, too, of course, but heâs worse. Ho has a china basket with blue ribbons and a pink kitten on it, hung up in his window to grow musk in. You know when I got all that old oak carvinâ out of Bideford Church, when they were restoring it (Ruskin says that any man whoâll restore a church is an unmitigated sweep), and stuck it up here with glue? Well, King came in and wanted to know whether weâd done it with a fret-saw! Yah! He is the King of basket-hangers!â
Down went McTurkâs inky thumb over an imaginary arena full of bleeding Kings. âPlacete, child of a generous race!â he cried to Beetle.
âWell,â began Beetle, doubtfully, âhe comes from Balliol, but Iâm going to give the beast a chance. You see I can always make him hop with some more poetry. He canât report me to the Head, because it makes him ridiculous. (Stalkyâs quite right.) But he shall have his chance.â
Beetle opened the book on the table, ran his finger down a page, and began at random:
âOr who in Moscow toward the Czar With the demurest of footfalls, Over the Kremlinâs pavement white With serpentine and syenite, Steps with five other generalsââ
âThatâs no good. Try another,â said Stalky.
âHold on a shake; I know whatâs coming.â McTurk was reading over Beetleâs shoulder.
âThat simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough And kerchiefwise unfold his sash, Whichâsoftnessâ selfâis yet the stuff
(Gummy! What a sentence!)
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps And leave the grand white neck no gash.
(Full stop.)â
ââDonât understand a word of it,â said Stalky.
âMore fool you! Construe,â said McTurk. âThose six bargees scragged the Czar, and left no evidence. Actumest_ with King.â
âHe gave me that book, too,â said Beetle, licking his lips:
âThereâs a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure if another fails.â
Then irrelevantly:
âSetebos! Setebos! and Setebos! Thinketh he liveth in the cold of the moon.â
âHeâs just come in from dinner,â said Dick Four, looking through the window. âManders minor is with him.â
ââSafest place for Manders minor just now,â said Beetle.
âThen you chaps had better clear out,â said Stalky politely to the visitors. ââTisnât fair to mix you up in a study row. Besides, we canât afford to have evidence.â
âAre you going to begin at once?â said Aladdin.
âImmediately, if not sooner,â said Stalky, and turned out the gas. âStrong, perseverinâ manâKing. Make him cry âCapivi.â Gâway, Binjimin.â
The company retreated to their own neat and spacious study with expectant souls.
âWhen Stalky blows out his nostrils like a horse,â said Aladdin to the Emperor of China, âheâs on the war-path. âWonder what King will get.â
âBeans,â said the Emperor. âNumber Five generally pays in full.â
âWonder if I ought to take any notice of it officially,â said Abanazar, who had just remembered he was a prefect.
âItâs none of your business, Pussy. Besides, if you did, weâd have them hostile to us; and we shouldnât be able to do any work,â said Aladdin. âTheyâve begun already.â
Now that West-African war-drum had been made to signal across estuaries and deltas. Number Five was forbidden to wake the engine within earshot of the school. But a deep, devastating drone filled the passages as McTurk and Beetle scientifically rubbed its top. Anon it changed to the blare of trumpetsâof savage pursuing trumpets. Then, as McTurk slapped one side, smooth with the blood of ancient sacrifice, the roar broke into short coughing howls such as the wounded gorilla throws in his native forest. These were followed by the wrath of Kingâthree steps at a time, up the staircase, with a dry whir of the gown. Aladdin and company, listening, squeaked with excitement as the door crashed open. King stumbled into the darkness, and cursed those performers by the gods of Balliol and quiet repose.
âTurned out for a week,â said Aladdin, holding the study door on the crack. âKey to be brought down to his study in five minutes. âBrutes! Barbarians! Savages! Children!â Heâs rather agitated. âArrah, Patsy, mind the baby,ââ he sang in a whisper as he clung to the door-knob, dancing a noiseless wardance.
King went down-stairs again, and Beetle and McTurk lit the gas to confer with Stalky. But Stalky had vanished.
âLooks like no end of a mess,â said Beetle, collecting his books and mathematical instrument case. âA week in the form-rooms isnât any advantage to us.â
âYes, but donât you see that Stalky isnât here, you owl!â said McTurk. âTake down the key, and look sorrowful. Kingâll only jaw you for half an hour. Iâm going to read in the lower form-room.â
âBut itâs always me,â mourned Beetle.
âWait till we see,â said McTurk, hopefully. âI donât know any more than you do what Stalky means, but itâs something. Go down and draw Kingâs fire. Youâre used to it.â
No sooner had the key turned in the door than the lid of the coal-box, which was also the window-seat, lifted cautiously. It had been a tight fit, even for the lithe Stalky, his head between his knees, and his stomach under his right ear. From a drawer in the table he took a well-worn catapult, a handful of buckshot, and a duplicate key of the study; noiselessly he raised the window and kneeled by it, his face turned to the road, the wind-sloped trees, the dark levels of the Burrows, and the white line of breakers falling nine-deep along the Pebbleridge. Far down the steep-banked Devonshire lane he heard the husky hoot of the carrierâs horn. There was a ghost of melody in it, as it might have been the wind in a gin-bottle essaying to sing, âItâs a way we have in the Army.â
Stalky smiled a tight-lipped smile, and at extreme range opened fire: the old horse half wheeled in the shafts.
âWhere he gwaine tu?â hiccoughed Rabbits-Eggs. Another buckshot tore through the rotten canvas tilt with a vicious zipp.
âHabet!â murmured Stalky, as Rabbits-Eggs swore into the patient night, protesting that he saw the âdommed collegerâ who was assaulting him.
âAnd so,â King was saying in a high head voice to Beetle, whom he had kept to play with before Manders minor, well knowing that it hurts a Fifth-form boy to be held up to a fagâs derision, âand so, Master Beetle, in spite of all our verses, which we are so proud of, when we presume to come into direct conflict with even so humble a representative of authority as myself, for instance, we are turned out of our studies, are we not?â
âYes, sir,â said Beetle, with a sheepish grin on his lips and murder in his heart. Hope had nearly left him, but he clung to a well-established faith that never was Stalky so dangerous as when he was invisible.
âYou are not required to criticise, thank you. Turned out of our studies, we are, just as if we were no better than little Manders minor. Only inky schoolboys we are, and must be treated as such.â
Beetle pricked up his ears, for Rabbits-Eggs was swearing savagely on the road, and some of the language entered at the upper sash. King believed in ventilation. He strode to the window gowned and majestic, very visible in the gaslight.
âI zee âun! I zee âun!â roared Rabbits-Eggs, now that he had found a visible foeâanother shot from the darkness above. âYiss, yeou, yeou long-nosed, fower-eyed, gingy-whiskered beggar! Yeuâm tu old for such goinâs on. Aie! Poultice yeour nose, I tall âee! Poultice yeour long nose!â
Beetleâs heart leaped up within him. Somewhere, somehow, he knew, Stalky moved behind these manifestations. There were hope and the prospect of revenge. He would embody the suggestion about the nose in deathless verse. King threw up the window, and sternly rebuked Rabbits-Eggs. But the carrier was beyond fear or fawning. He had descended from the cart, and was stooping by the roadside.
It all fell swiftly as a dream. Manders minor raised his hand to his head with a cry, as a jagged flint cannoned on to some rich tree-calf bindings in the bookshelf. Another quoited along the writing-table. Beetle made zealous feint to stop it, and in that endeavor overturned a studentâs lamp, which dripped, via Kingâs papers and some choice books,
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