Billy Bunter's Benefit By Frank Richards - Friardale

Billy Bunter’s Benefit
By Frank Richards
table and several overturned chairs, scattered books and papers.
“000oooh!” gasped Coker.
He staggered to his feet. He remembered his lines. He looked at them.
They lay at his feet—swimming in ink. Three hundred and fifty lines out
of the total of seven hundred and fifty-six—nearly half that awful
“book”— inky, crumpled, trampled—obviously in no state for presentation
to Prout! Coker gazed at them, with feelings that could not be expressed
in English, or Latin, or any known language.
He gazed and gazed. It was quite a long time before Coker felt equal to
setting up the table, sorting out fresh impot paper and starting again at
“arma virumque cano.”
CHAPTER XXVII
SURPRISING!
“BEATS me!” said Bob Cherry.
“The beatfulness is terrific!” agreed Hurree Jamset Ram Singh.
“Potty, I suppose,” remarked Johnny Bull.
“Can’t make it out,” said Frank Nugent.
Harry Wharton shook his head. He was puzzled: and so were most of the
Remove fellows. It was really hard to understand.
Billy Bunter was “in” for the Old Boy’s Latin Prize. On Tuesday the papers
had to be handed in to Mr. Quelch. It was a “Form” prize, and concerned
only the Lower Fourth and their form-master. It was Quelch’s duty, and
perhaps his pleasure, to go through the papers submitted, judge them,
and award the cash prize to the best. Half-a-dozen Remove men were
putting in for it. The surprising thing was that William George Bunter was
one of the fellows who marched off to Quelch’s study after class to hand
in his paper.
It was not surprising that Bunter, well known to be in need of cash, and
with the dread of Mr. Parker on his fat mind, had, in an optimistic
moment, entered for the prize. Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
and Bunter might have entertained a faint hope of pulling it off—when he
put down his name.
That he had the faintest chance was, of course, an absurd idea. He was
easily the worst man in the form at that game—even a dense fellow like
Bolsover major, or a slacker like Snoop, could have beaten him hollow.
Moreover, he was also the laziest member of the Remove, and even if he
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