Billy Bunter's Benefit By Frank Richards - Friardale

Billy Bunter’s Benefit
By Frank Richards
Coker to admit that the Fifth-form Stage Club was merely an imitation of
the Remove Dramatic Society. It was a fact that the R.D.S. had put the
idea into Coker’s head. But when Coker did not like a fact, he preferred
not to see it.
Coker believed that he could act. It was a touching belief—as touching as
his belief that he could play cricket.
In such matters as cricket, Coker’s belief in his own wonderful powers
was ruthlessly disregarded. Blundell, the captain of the Fifth, would no
more have played Coker in the Form team than Wingate, the captain of
the school, would have played him in the first eleven. In the Stage Club it
was quite different.
There Coker was monarch of all he surveyed.
Nobody, excepting Coker, paid anything. The whole thing was run by
Coker, at Coker’s expense—or, to be more accurate, his Aunt Judy’s. A
good many of the Fifth were members. They liked the meetings in Coker’s
study. There was generally a hamper from Aunt Judy in that study, and
Coker was a generous and hospitable fellow. In times of dearth, a free
run of Coker’s hampers from home was an undoubted attraction. Potter
and Greene and their friends in the Fifth did not exactly admit that the
chief consideration in the matter was the loaves and fishes. It did not
even occur to Coker. He fed his friends well because he was a lavish,
hospitable sort of fellow, and had no suspicions.
He threw his weight about, because that was his way. But he was not
conscious of that either. Being the fellow who knew best in all matters, it
was natural that he should have no use for argument or carping criticism.
The Stage Club gave him his head.
But they seemed to get a sort of shock when Coker announced, not only
that he had decided on a performance of Shakespeare, but that he had
assigned himself the role of Hamlet.
Half-a-dozen fellows stared. Fitzgerald turned a laugh into a cough just in
time. Tomlinson stopped with a doughnut half-way to his mouth, and gazed
over it at Coker.
Coker was conscious of a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the assembled
company. He frowned.
“Hamlet!” he repeated firmly. “I’ve been looking over the part, and I
fancy it will suit me down to the ground.”
“Oh!” said Potter.
“What do you mean by ‘oh’ exactly, Potter?” inquired Coker, coldly.
“Oh! Nothing.”
“Think we’re up to a Shakespeare play, Coker?” murmured Fitzgerald.
“Well, frankly, no, at present,” answered Coker. “I shall be all right, but
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