I can recall his boyish face now (it was always a boyish
face), the tears streaming down it as he sat in the schoolyard beside a
bucket, in which he was drowning three white mice and a tame rat. I sat
down opposite and cried too, while helping him to hold a saucepan lid
over the poor little creatures, and thus there sprang up a friendship
between us, which grew.
Over the grave of these murdered rodents, he took a solemn oath never to
break school rules again, by keeping either white mice or tame rats, but
to devote the whole of his energies for the future to pleasing his
masters, and affording his parents some satisfaction for the money being
spent upon his education.
Seven weeks later, the pervadence throughout the dormitory of an
atmospheric effect more curious than pleasing led to the discovery that
he had converted his box into a rabbit hutch. Confronted with eleven
kicking witnesses, and reminded of his former promises, he explained that
rabbits were not mice, and seemed to consider that a new and vexatious
regulation had been sprung upon him. The rabbits were confiscated. What
was their ultimate fate, we never knew with certainty, but three days
later we were given rabbit-pie for dinner. To comfort him I endeavoured
to assure him that these could not be his rabbits.
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