Tea over, he staggered into the Preparation room and sat at his desk with his brows on his hand and his eyes on his book.  The print danced before his gaze:  letter rushed into letter, word merged mistily into word, line into line, till all was a grey blur.  A blink of the eyes—­an effort of the will—­a sort of “squad, shun!” to the type before him—­and the words jumped back into their places, letters separated from their entanglement and stood like soldiers at spruce attention.  A relaxing of the effort—­and dismiss! helter-skelter, pell-mell went letter, word, and line.  It was all a blur again.  Once more he made the necessary exercise of his will and was able to read a line or two; but, if the mistiness were not to come before his eyes, the effort had to be sustained, and that made his head feel very heavy.  It proved too much for him; the will to do it expired, and away went the letters into the fog.  Some boys whispered that he was sighing for his friend Ray; others teased him by muttering:  “Diddums get whacked by the prefects?  Diddums get a leathering?”

Poor Doe!  He must have been strongly tempted to retort:  “I wasn’t whacked, so sucks!” and to describe that picturesque incident when he smashed the prefects’ cane, for his milk was the praise of men.  But he had to choose whether, by a little honourable bragging, he should gratify his desire for glory, or by a martyr’s silence he should give himself the satisfaction of playing a fine hero.  The latter was the stronger motive.  He kept silence, and only hoped that his valorous deeds would leak out.

Preparation was nearly over when there came one of those heart-stopping crashes which all who hear know to be the total collapse of a human being.  A faint—­aye, and a faint in the first degree, when life goes out like a candle.

“Who’s that?  What’s that?” cried the master-in-charge, quickly rising.

“It’s Doe, sir.  He’s fainted.”

“Oh, ah, I see,” said he, leaving his desk and hastening to the spot.  “Sit down, all of you.  There’s nothing very extraordinary in a boy fainting.  Here, Stanley, pick him up and take him to the sick-room; and, Bickerton, go with him.  The rest of you get on with your work.”

Thereafter Pennybet—­or, at least, so he assured us—­expended his spare time in knocking his head against walls and holding his breath in the hope that he, too, might faint and have a restful holiday in the sick-room.

“For,” said he, “where Doe and Ray are, there should Me be also.”

Sec.5

“It’s funny that we do everything together,” said Doe that same evening, as we lay in our beds and watched each other’s eyes in the light of the turned-down gas.  “First we’re twins; then we get whacked together; then we both get rowed by prefects; and I do a faint and you do a sort of fit....  But, I say, Rupert, look here; I want to ask you something:  will people think I was a fool in everything I did, or will they think—­well, the other thing?  I mean, let’s put it like this—­what would Radley think?”