 But she used to say one thing which Ernest liked; if the Doctor went
out to dinner, and there were no prayers, she would come in and say, »Young
gentlemen, prayers are excused this evening,« and, take her for all in all, she
was a kindly old soul enough.
    Most boys soon discover the difference between noise and actual danger, but
to others it is so unnatural to menace, unless they mean mischief, that they are
long before they leave off taking turkey-cocks and ganders au sérieux. Ernest
was one of this latter sort, and found the atmosphere of Roughborough so gusty
that he was glad to shrink out of sight and out of mind whenever he could. He
disliked the games worse even than the squalls of the classroom and hall, for he
was still feeble, not filling out and attaining his full strength till a much
later age than most boys. This was perhaps due to the closeness with which his
father had kept him to his book in childhood, but I think in part also to a
tendency towards lateness in attaining maturity, hereditary in the Pontifex
family - which was one also of unusual longevity. At thirteen or fourteen he was
a mere bag of bones, with upper arms about as thick as the wrists of other boys
of his age; his little chest was pigeon-breasted; he appeared to have no
strength nor stamina whatever, and finding he always went to the wall in
physical encounters, whether undertaken in jest or earnest, even with boys
shorter than himself, the timidity natural to childhood increased upon him to an
extent that I am afraid amounted to cowardice. This rendered him even less
capable than he might otherwise have been, for as confidence increases power, so
want of confidence increases impotence. After he had had the breath knocked out
of him and been well shinned half a dozen times in scrimmages at football -
scrimmages in which he had become involved sorely against his will - he ceased
to see any further fun in football, and shirked that noble game in a way that
got him into trouble with the elder boys, who would stand no shirking on the
part of the younger ones.
    He was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with football, nor in
spite of all his efforts could he ever throw a ball or a stone. It soon became
plain, therefore, to everyone that Pontifex was a young muff, a mollycoddle, not
to be tortured, but still not to be rated highly. He was not however actively
unpopular, for it was seen that he was quite square - inter pares -
