School Days

  School Stories

  School Stories

  Ruskin Bond

  First published in 2010 by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

  7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110002

  Sales centres:

  Allahabad Bengaluru Chennai

  Hyderabad Jaipur Kathmandu

  Kolkata Mumbai

  Copyright of individual stories remain with the individual authors.

  Cover design: Sonali Lal

  This digital edition published in 2012

  e-ISBN: 978-81-291-2188-2

  All rights reserved.

  This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Contents

  Miss Babcock's Big Toe • Ruskin Bond

  Tom Sawyer • Mark Twain

  David Copperfield Fights the Canterbury 'Lamb' • Charles Dickens

  Little Jack • Anton Chekhov

  The Baker's Boy • Samuel Smiles

  The Sea in the Bottle • Lionel Seepaul

  The Brothers and the Witch • Ian Fellowes Gordon

  The Outlaws' Report • Richmal Crompton

  Auntie • Edward Blishen

  The Children's Crusade • Steven Runciman

  G. Trueheart, Man's Best Friend • James Mcnamee

  The Girl who never knew Dad • A Head Teacher

  The Dam • Halliday Sutherland

  Going to a Hockey Game with my Sister • Teruko Hyuga

  Old Warrior • David Walker

  The Phantom Pirates • Rick Ferreira

  Oath of Friendship • Arthur Waley (trans)

  Miss Smith and the Black Pearl • Maureen Lee

  The Black One • Charles Webster

  Kafa, the Furious One • Peggy Albrecht

  The Candidate Who Knew Too Much • Surendra Mohanty

  Uncle Ken's Rumble in the Jungle • Ruskin Bond

  Miss Babcock's Big Toe

  Ruskin Bond

  IF TWO PEOPLE ARE THROWN TOGETHER FOR A LONG TIME, THEY can become either close friends or sworn enemies.

  Thus it was with Tata and me when we both went down with mumps and had to spend a fortnight together in the school hospital. It wasn't really a hospital - just a five-bed ward in a small cottage on the approach road to our prep school in Chotta Simla. It was supervised by a retired nurse, an elderly matron called Miss Babcock who was all but stone deaf.

  Miss Babcock was an able nurse, but she was a fidgety, fussy person, always dashing about from ward to dispensary, to her own room, and as a result the boys called her Miss Shuttlecock. As she couldn't hear us, she didn't mind. But her hearing difficulty did create something of a problem - both for her and for her patients. If someone in the ward felt ill late at night, he had to shout or ring a bell - and she heard neither. So someone had to get up and fetch her.

  Miss Babcock devised an ingenious method of waking her in an emergency. She tied a long piece of string to the foot of a sick person's bed; then took the other end of the string to her own room where, upon retiring for the night, she tied it to her big toe.

  A vigorous pull on the string from the sick person, and Miss Babcock would be wide awake!

  Now, what could be more tempting than this device? The string was tied to the foot of Tata's bed, and he was a restless fellow, always wanting water, always complaining of aches and pains. And sometimes, out of plain mischief, he would give several tugs on that string until Miss Babcock arrived with a pill or a glass of water.

  'You'll have my toe off by morning,' she complained. 'You don't have to pull quite so hard.'

  And what was worse, when Tata did fall asleep, he snored to high heaven and nothing could wake him! I had to lie awake most of the night, listening to his rhythmic snoring. It was like a trumpet tuning up. Or a bull-frog calling to its mate.

  Fortunately, a couple of nights later, we were joined in the ward by Bimal, a friend and fellow 'feather', who had also contracted mumps. One night of Tata's snoring, and Bimal resolved to do something about it.

  'Wait until he's fast asleep,' said Bimal, 'and then we'll carry his bed outside and leave him on the veranda.' We did more than that. As Tata commenced his nightly imitation of the all-wind instruments in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, we pushed up his bed as gently as possible and carried it out into the garden, putting it down beneath the nearest pine tree.

  'It's healthier outside,' said Bimal, justifying our action. 'All this fresh air should cure him.'

  Leaving Tata to serenade the stars, we returned to the ward and enjoyed a good night's sleep. So did Miss Babcock.

  In fact, no one slept because we were woken by Miss Babcock running around the ward screaming 'where's Tata there was no sign.' Instead, a large black-faced langur sat at the foot of the bed, showing us its teeth in a grin of disfavor.

  'Tata's gone,' gasped Miss Babcock.

  'He must be a sleep-walker too,' said Bimal.

  'Maybe the leopard took him,' I said. Just then there was a commotion in the shrubbery at the end of the garden, and shouting 'Help, help!' Tata emerged from the bushes, followed by several lithe, long-tailed langur s, merrily, giving chase. Apparently he'd woken up at the crack of dawn, to find his bed surrounded by a gang of inquisitive simians. They had meant no harm; but Tata had panicked, and made a dash for life and liberty, running into the forest instead of into the cottage. We got Tata and his bed back into the ward, and Miss Babcock took his temperature and gave him a dose of salts. Oddly enough, in all the excitement no one asked how Tata and his bed had travelled in the night. And strange to say, he did not snore the following night, so maybe the pine-scented night air really helped. Needless to say, we soon recovered from the mumps, and Miss Babcock's big toe received a well-deserved rest.

  Tom Sawyer

  Mark Twain

  THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT AUNT POLLY'S MANNER WHEN SHE kissed Tom, that swept away his low spirits and made him light-hearted and happy again. He started to school, and had the luck of coming upon Becky Thatcher at the head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his manner. Without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said:

  'I acted mighty mean today, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't ever, ever do it that way again as long as ever I live - please make up, won't you?'

  The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face.

  'I'll thank you to keep yourself to yourself, Mr Thomas Sawyer. I'll never speak to you again.'

  She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not even presence of mind enough to say 'Who cares, Miss Smarty?' until the right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the school-yard wishing she were a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to Becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to 'take in', she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured spelling-book. If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred Temple, Tom's offensive fling had driven it entirely away.

  Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself. The master, Mr Dobbins, ha
d reached middle age with an unsatisfied ambition. The darling of his desires was to be a doctor, but poverty had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk, and absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two theories were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in the case. Now as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the door, she noticed that the key was in the lock! It was a precious moment. She glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant she had the book in her hands. The title-page - professor somebody's Anatomy - carried no information to her mind; so she began to turn the leaves. She came at once upon a handsomely engraved and coloured frontispiece - a human figure. At that moment a shadow fell on the page, and Tom Sawyer stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse of the picture. Becky snatched at the book to close it, and had the hard luck to tear the pictured page half down the middle. She thrust the volume into the desk, turned the key, and burst out crying with shame and vexation:

  'Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a person and look at what they're looking at.'

  'How could I know you are looking at anything?'

  'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer; you know you're going to tell on me; and, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do? I'll be whipped, and I was never whipped in school.'

  Then she stamped her little foot and said:

  'Be so mean if you want to! I know something that's going to happen. You just wait, and you'll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!' - and she flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying.

  Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said to himself:

  'What a curious kind of a fool a girl is. Never been licked in school! Shucks, what's a licking! That's just like a girl - they're so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting even on her that ain't so mean; but what of it? Old Dobbins will ask who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way he always does - ask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the right girl he'll know it, without any telling. Girls' faces always tell on them. They ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's a kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there ain't any way out of it.' Tom conned the thing a moment longer, and then added: All right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fix - let her sweat it out!'

  Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few moments the master arrived and school 'took in'. Tom did not feel a strong interest in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the girls' side of the room, Becky's face troubled him. Considering all things, he did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. He could get up no exultation that was really worth the name. presently the spelling-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind was entirely full of his own matters for a while after that. Becky roused up from her lethargy of distress, and showed good interest in the proceedings. She did not expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he spilt the ink on the book himself; and she was right. The denial only seemed to make the thing worse for Tom. Becky supposed she would be glad of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she found she was not certain. when the worst came to the worst, she had an impulse to get up and tell on Alfred Temple, but she made an effort and forced herself to keep still, because, said she to herself, 'He'll tell about me tearing the picture, sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save his life!'

  Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout - he had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck to the denial from principle.

  A whole hour drifted by; the master sat nodding in his throne; the air was drowsy with the hum of study. By-and-by Mr Dobbins straightened himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book, but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. Most of the pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched his movements with intent eyes. Mr Dobbins fingered his book absently for a while, then took it out, and settled himself in his chair to read.

  Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit look as she did, with a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot his quarrel with her. Quick, something must be done! Done in a flash, too! But the very imminence of the emergency paralysed his invention. Good! he had an inspiration! He would run and snatch the book, spring through the door and fly! But his resolution shook for one little instant, and the chance was lost - the master opened the volume. If Tom only had the wasted opportunity back again! Too late; there was no help for Becky now, he said. The next moment the master faced the school. Every eye sank under his gaze; there was that in it which smote even the innocent with fear. There was silence while one might count ten; the master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke:

  'Who tore this book?'

  There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt.

  'Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?'

  A denial. Another pause.

  'Joseph Harper, did you?'

  Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of boys, considered a while, then turned to the girls:

  'Amy Lawrence?'

  A shake of the head.

  'Grade Miller?'

  The same sign.

  'Susan Harper, did you do this?'

  Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling from head to foot with excitement, and a sense of the hopelessness of the situation.

  'Rebecca Thatcher' - (Tom glanced at her face; it was white with terror) - 'did you tear - no, look me in the face' - (her hands rose in appeal) - 'did you tear this book?'

  A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to his feet and shouted:

  'I done it!'

  The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom stood a moment to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward to go to his punishment, the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred floggings. Inspired by the splendour of his own act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flogging that even Mr Dobbins had ever administered; and also received with indifference the added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be dismissed - for he knew who would wait for him outside till his captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss either.

  Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple; for with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting her own treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way soon to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last with Becky's latest words lingering dreamily in his ear:

  'Tom, how could you be so noble!'

  David Copperfield

  Fights the Canterbury 'Lamb'

  Charles Dickens

  As every reader knows, Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, apart from being his best if not most popular novel, is largely the story of the author's own boyhood. David was first sent to a bad school (Creakle's), where he and the other boys were ill-used. But at the age of twelve he was, through the knavery of his guardian, put to work in a factory; whence he escaped - tramping from London to Dover, where he found happiness with a kind aunt who adopted him. She sent him to the school here described, which the present editor believes to be King's School, Canterbury. David boards with Mr Wickfield, the aunt's solicit
or and friend, whose clerk is the repulsive Uriah Heep.

  NEXT MORNING, AFTER BREAKFAST, I ENTERED ON SCHOOL LIFE again. I went, accompanied by Mr Wickfield, to the scene of my future studies - a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the Cathedral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing on the grassplot - and was introduced to my new master, Doctor Strong.

  Doctor Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff and heavy as the great stone urns that flanked them, and were set up, on the top of the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round the court, like sublimated skittles, for time to play at. He was in his library (I mean Doctor Strong was), with his clothes not particularly well brushed, and his hair not particularly well combed; his knee-smalls unbraced; his long black gaiters unbuttoned; and his shoes yawning like two caverns on the hearth-rug. Turning upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me of a long-forgotten blind old horse who once used to crop the grass; and tumble over the graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he was glad to see me: and then he gave me his hand; which I didn't know what to do with, as it did nothing for itself. . . .

  The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall. There were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf outside the windows; the broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were made of painted tin) have ever since, by association, been symbolical to me of silence and retirement. About five-and-twenty boys were studiously engaged at their books when we went in, but they rose to give the Doctor good morning, and remained standing when they saw Mr Wickfield and me.