The Secret Glory
the speckled walls, for instance, were not really there, but he was to behave just as if they were solid realities. He would presently rise and go through an odd pantomine of washing and dressing, putting on brilliant boots, and going down to various mumbo-jumbo ceremonies called breakfast, chapel and dinner, in the company of appearances to whom he would accord all the honours due to veritable beings. And this delicious phantasmagoria would go on and on day after day, he alone having the secret; and what a delight it would be to "play up" at rocker! It seemed to him that the solid-seeming earth, the dear old school and rocker itself had all been made to minister to the acuteness of his pleasure; they were the darkness that made the light visible, the matter through which form was manifested. For the moment he enclosed in the most secret place of his soul the true world into which he had been guided; and as he dressed he hummed the favourite school song, "Never mind!"
"If the umpire calls 'out' at your poor second over,
If none of your hits ever turns out a 'rover,'
If you fumble your fives and 'go rot' over sticker,
If every hound is a little bit quicker;
If you can't tackle rocker at all, not at all,
And kick at the moon when you try for the ball,
Never mind, never mind, never mind—if you fall,
Dick falls before rising, Tom's short ere he's tall,
103
