The Camera Fiend

MP3 Audio CD. The Camera Fiend

A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS


Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily
exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken away
his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in open hall,
and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion of his own
study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been bothering him by
that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For it was not a very
honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket had been called “a conscientious
ass” by some of the nicest fellows in his house. Perhaps he deserved the
epithet for going even as straight as he did to his house‐master, who was
discovered correcting proses with a blue pencil and a briar pipe.

“Please, sir, Mr. Coverley can’t have me, sir. He’s got a case of
chicken‐pox, sir.”

The boy produced the actual intimation in a few strokes of an honoured but
laconic pen. The man poised his pencil and puffed his pipe.

“Then you must come back to‐night, and I’m just as glad. It’s all
nonsense your staying the night whenever you go up to see that doctor of
yours.”

“He makes a great point of it, sir. He likes to try some fresh stuff on
me, and then see what sort of night I have.”

“You could go up again to‐morrow.”

“Of course I could, sir,” replied Pocket Upton, with a delicate emphasis
on his penultimate. At the moment he was perhaps neither so acutely
conscientious nor such an ass as his critics considered him.

“What else do you propose?” inquired Mr. Spearman.