Parkhurst Boys Part 15

"Oh yes, to be sure!" exclaims Tim, with the gesture of one who clutches at the very words of his own lips uttered by another; "of course, _that's what I meant_!"

"Timothy," says the master, gravely, "if you meant it, why did you not say it?"

Why not, indeed? That is one of the very few questions, reader, in all this world's philosophy which Timothy is unable to answer.

Of course every one laughs at Timothy, but that does not afflict him.

So fortified is he in the a.s.surance of his own infallibility, that the scorn of the ignorant is to him but as the rippling of water at the base of a lighthouse.

Do not mistake me, Tim is not a dunce. For every question he answers wrongly, perhaps he answers half a dozen correctly. If he chose to take his stand on his general proficiency, he would pa.s.s for a fairly clever fellow. But that will by no means satisfy him. He will never admit himself beaten. There is always some trivial accident, some unforeseen coincidence, without which his success would have been certain and recognised; but which, as it happens, slightly interfere with his triumph.

It is the same in games as in the cla.s.s-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 gra.s.s just where the ball pitched; if he lets the enemy's halfback pa.s.s 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 a.s.sembled 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 s.h.i.+p when it was seen, wasn't that it?"

"Yes, a mile and a half from the s.h.i.+p. I _thought_ you were drawing the long bow in saying it was so big as all that."

"They saw it a mile and a half off, and just fancy feeling its breath at that distance?"

"I'm not astonished at that," said Tim, "for all those beasts have enormous lungs."

"How absurd of me! I should have said it seemed to all appearances lifeless when they saw it," said Tidswell.

"Yes; dead, in fact," put in Tim, getting into difficulties.

"And then suddenly it stood erect on its tail, and shot forward towards the vessel."

"Shows the strength of their backs. I couldn't help thinking that when I saw the account."

"What am I talking about?" exclaimed Tidswell, hastily correcting himself; "it was the s.h.i.+p stood in towards the monster and shot at him."

"Ah, yes; so it was. I made the same mistake myself, see. Yes, they fired a broadside at him."

"No; only one shot at his head."

"That was all. Isn't that what you said?"

"And then he turned over in the water--"

"Dead as a leg of mutton!" put in Tim.

"No; the shot missed him, and he wasn't touched."

"No. I meant they all thought he was as dead as a leg of mutton; but he was not so much as grazed."

All this while the amus.e.m.e.nt of the listeners had been growing gradually beyond control, and at this point smothered explosions of laughter from one and another fell on Tim's ears, like the dropping of musketry fire.

But he did not guess its meaning, and continued turning towards Tidswell, and waiting for the conclusion of the story.

"And the last they saw of him," resumed that worthy, his voice quailing with the exertion to keep it grave and composed--"the last they saw of him was, he was spinning away at the rate of twenty knots an hour, with his tail in his mouth, in the direction of the North Pole."

"I fancied it was only eighteen knots an hour," put in Tim seriously.

Another moment, and the laughter would a.s.suredly burst upon him.

"Not in the account I saw. What paper did you see it in, Tim?"

"Eh? Why, the same as you," replied Tim hurriedly, beginning to suspect the crimson faces of his comrades meant something more than admiration of his wisdom. "Where did you get the tale from? I forget."

"I got the tale out of my head--like the serpent, you humbug!" roared Tidswell; and for the next five minutes Tim sat on his stool of repentance, amid the yells of laughter with which his companions hailed his discomfiture.

When silence was restored, of course he tried to explain that "he knew all along it was a joke, and only wanted to see how far he could gammon the fellows, and fancied he succeeded," and presently quitted the room, an injured but by no means humiliated boy.

One last word. Timothy and his friends are amusing up to one point, and detestable up to another point; but when they come to you in the hour of your deepest sorrow and distress, and, with bland smile, say to you, "I told you so!" they are beyond all endurance, and you hope for nothing more devoutly than that you may never see their odious faces again.

The best cure possible for Tim is a h.o.m.oeopathic one. Find some other boy equally conceited, equally foolish, equally unscrupulous, and set him at Tim. I will undertake to say that--unless the two devour one another down to the very tips of their tails, like the famous Kilkenny cats--they will bring one another to reason, and perhaps modesty, in double-quick time.

The great and wise Newton once said of himself that, so far from knowing all things, he seemed to himself to be but as a boy gathering pebbles on the seash.o.r.e, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him.

Newton was, in his way, almost as fine a fellow as Timothy Told-you-so, and if Timothy would but stoop to have more of Newton's spirit, he might in time come to possess an atom or two of Newton's sense.