Extract: Billy Bunter’s Benefit

 Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove at Greyfriars School has been tricked by another boy into handing in his Latin prose to his form master Mr Quelch that is copied from Virgil. Quelch is not amused and slips the cane from under his arm into his hand.

 

 

CHAPTER XXVIII

NOT BUNTER’S!

“BUNTER!”

“Oh! Yes, sir!”

Billy Bunter rose from the armchair.

He fixed his eyes, and his spectacles, uneasily, on Quelch’s speaking countenance.

That Quelch was in a “bait” even the Owl of the Remove could see. Why, he did not know. But there were too many sins on the fat Owl’s conscience for him to feel easy in his mind when Quelch looked like that!

Mr. Quelch came into the Rag.

His gimlet-eyes fixed on Bunter. Never had they looked so much like gimlets. They seemed almost to bore into Bunter. The other fellows looked on in silence, wondering what Bunter had done this time—and not envying him.

“Bunter!” repeated Mr. Quelch.

“It—it wasn’t me, sir—!” stammered Bunter.

“What? What do you mean, Bunter? What was not you?” rapped Mr. Quelch.

“Oh! Anything, sir,” gasped Bunter. “If—if it’s about a cake——“

“A cake!” repeated Mr. Quelch, blankly.

“Yes, sir! I mean, no sir! It wasn’t me! I haven’t been anywhere near Coker’s study, and if he says—.”

“Bunter! You handed in this paper to my study.” Quelch, with the forefinger of his right hand, tapped the paper in his left. “This, Bunter, is the Latin paper you brought to my study a quarter of an hour ago. I have just examined it. I was amazed.”

“Oh!” gasped Bunter. He realised that Quelch’s visit to the Rag had no connection with a cake! It was something to do with Bunter’s paper for the Latin prize.

The fat Owl felt an inward tremor. The paper was good—Stewart of the Shell had told him so, and Stewart knew. Had Quelch’s suspicions been aroused by that circumstance? Did he suspect that it wasn’t Bunter’s own paper?

It had not occurred to Billy Bunter’s fat brain that there was anything particularly reprehensible in palming off another fellow’s paper as his own. He had given that aspect of the matter no thought at all. A fellow couldn’t think of everything, and Bunter had left that item out of consideration.
Wharton, having withdrawn, had no use for a Latin paper. Bunter, badly in need of three guineas, had! To leave it under the carpet in No. 1 Study was a sheer waste. That was how Bunter looked at it. It seemed reasonable enough to him.

But he was aware that Quelch, after the manner of school-masters, might take some unreasonable view of the matter. Really, you never knew where you were, with a school-master. They were down on all sorts of things that seemed quite all right to Bunter!

“I was amazed,” Mr. Quelch was going on. “I was astounded! I could scarcely believe my eyes! I can scarcely believe them now! Such audacity—such unheard-of effrontery—.”
The thunder was rolling now!

“Oh!” stuttered Bunter. “I—I——-.”

“Such unscrupulousness — such obtuseness — such insensate stupidity!” thundered Mr. Quelch. “I can scarcely believe, Bunter, that you could hope to palm off these verses as your own.”
“Oh!” ejaculated several voices in the staring crowd of juniors. They were getting a clue now to the cause of Quelch’s ire.

“You have written this paper—you have signed your name upon it—you have handed it in as your own!” thundered Quelch.

“Oh! Yes, sir!” gasped Bunter.

“Bunter! Do you dare to claim these verses as your own?” almost shrieked the Remove master.
“Oh, crikey! I—I mean, yes, sir. N-n-nobody else did them for me,” stammered Bunter. “That—that’s my paper, sir. ‘Tain’t Wharton’s.”

“Wharton’s!” repeated Mr. Quelch, as if dazed.

“Yes, sir—I—I mean, no, sir! If—if my paper’s a bit like Wharton’s sir, I—I can’t help it; It—it’s—it’s just a coincidence, sir.”

“You unspeakably stupid boy, do you imagine that I could suppose that Wharton, or any boy of my form, could write such verses as these?” Quelch was shrieking again.

“Oh! No, sir! Yes, sir! Oh, lor’!” Bunter could only splutter. He was quite at a loss.

Quelch might have found out somehow that the verses were Wharton’s. But it was not, it seemed, that. So what was the matter with Quelch, the unfortunate fat Owl could not begin to guess.
“Bunter! I almost doubt whether you are in your senses!”

“Oh, really, sir—.”

“You have endeavoured to palm off on me, your form-master, verses which neither you nor any other Greyfriars boy could have written—.’

“Oh, lor’.”

“Verses,” continued Mr. Quelch, almost ferociously, “with which I have been well acquainted ever since I was a schoolboy myself.”

Bunter almost fell down.

“Verses, Bunter, which have been famous for many centuries—verses which were written almost two thousand years ago—written by the greatest poet of the Augustan age—verses with which every school-master is familiar— known to almost every senior schoolboy—.”

Bunter could only goggle at him.

So far as Bunter knew, these verses had been written by Harry Wharton, of the Remove, in No. 1 Study at Greyfriars School! Hadn’t he found them there, written in Wharton’s fist? It seemed to Bunter that Quelch must be wandering in his mind.

“Such effrontery—such audacity—such unscrupulous mendacity—such insensate stupidity!” Quelch was almost gasping. “Could you imagine, Bunter, when you copied these verses from Virgil, that I, a school-master, was unacquainted with the works of that poet, and could be imposed upon? Could you suppose for one moment that a form-master in this school had never read the seventh eclogue of Virgil? Are you in your wits?”

“Oh, my hat!” gasped Bob Cherry, involuntarily.

“Oh, that fat idiot!” breathed Peter Todd.

“I am amazed,—shocked—astounded! The dishonesty of such an action is appalling! But the stupidity of it is almost beyond credence!” articulated Mr. Quelch, “You have handed in, as your own work, verses with which I have been familiar from boyhood!—copied from one of the best-known works of a celebrated poet—and apparently hoped to escape detection!”

Mr. Quelch held up the paper.

The juniors stared at it.

They had been very curious about what sort of paper Billy Bunter could have handed in for the Latin Prize. But certainly they had not expected this! They fairly blinked at that Latin paper. The hand was Bunter’s—the verses were written in his well-known scrawl. But the composition certainly was not Bunter’s!

Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis,
compulerantque greges Corydon et Thyrsis in unum.
Thysis ovis, Corydon distentas lacte capellas,
ambo florentes aetatibus, Arcades ambo,
et cantare pares et respondere parati.

Quelch tapped the paper again with a lean forefinger. “These verses, Bunter, copied from the seventh eclogue of Virgil, you have endeavoured to palm off as your own!”

“Oh, crumbs!” breathed Bob Cherry.

“Oh, scissors!”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

It was a serious moment. Quelch looked fearfully serious. But the juniors really could not help it. The idea of Bunter seeking to palm off as his own, verses which every master at Greyfriars knew by heart, was too much for them. They yelled.

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“Silence!” roared Mr. Quelch. “This is not a laughing matter! Silence, I say.”

The laughter died away. But many faces were grinning. The juniors seemed to think that it was a laughing matter, if Quelch didn’t.

“Bunter—!”

“Oh, lor’!”

“I can make allowances for your unusual obtuseness— for your almost incredible stupidity. This attempt to deceive me is so childish, so infantile, that I must make some allowance for such almost unbelievable foolishness. But I can make no allowance for dishonest intention, Bunter. I shall cane you with the utmost severity for that.”

“Oh, crikey!”

Quelch slipped the cane from under his arm into his hand.

“Bunter! Bend over that chair!”

“I—I say, sir—.”

“Do you hear me, Bunter?”

“I—I never—I—I didn’t—it—it—it wasn’t me, sir—!” stuttered Bunter.

“Bend over!” thundered Mr. Quelch, in a voice that made Bunter jump.
Billy Bunter bent over the chair, with dire anticipations. His direst anticipations were more than realised.

Swipe! Swipe! Swipe!

“Yow-ow-ow-ow-ow!” roared Bunter.

Swipe!

“Yaroooh!”

Swipe!

!Yooo-hoooooooop!”

SWIPE!

Quelch put his beef into it. Immemorial custom prescribed “six” as the limit. Quelch kept to the six: but every one was a swipe, and the last swipe was really terrific. Billy Bunter’s frantic roar woke every echo in the Rag.

“Now, Bunter—.”

“Yow-ow-ow-ow!”

“Let this be a warning to you!”

“Wow! Wow! Wow!”

Mr. Quelch tucked the cane under his arm again, and swept out of the Rag. He left Billy Bunter yelling with anguish, and every other fellow yelling with laughter.

 

Extracted from Billy Bunter’s Benefit by Frank Richards (Charles Skilton: 1950)

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