Working the Oracle

"Boo hoo!"

Jim Valentine started.

It was some time after tea, and Valentine had been in the gym with his friends. He had left them there and come back to the House, and up to the Remove passage. He had some work to do, and was going to get it done in Study No.1 before prep.

As he approached Study No.1 he was surprised by the sound of "blubbing" going on within that celebrated apartment.

Blubbing was extremely uncommon, if not entirely unknown, in the Greyfriars Remove. Even fags in the Second did not blub.

So Valentine was naturally astonished.

He was not aware that a fat youth had been watching from the doorway of the study, had seen his head rise into view on the Remove staircase, and had then backed into the study, and commenced the sound of woe and lamentation that so startled him. Valentine was not so accustomed to the wiles as the other fellows to the wiles of William George Bunter

"What the dickens - " he exclaimed.

He stared into his study

Billy Bunter was seated in the arm-chair there, with his fat face buried in his podgy hands

"Boo hoo Boo hoo!" wailed Bunter.

"You silly owl" roared Valentine

Billy Bunter removed the podgy hands from the fat face and blinked at Valentine. Tears were running down his fat cheeks. They were real tears. Bunter had thrown a slice of onion out of the window just as before Valentine entered. The tears were plainly visible – the cause of them had disappeared.

Valentine stared at him.

"What on earth’s the matter?" he asked.

The sight of tears disarmed him, as he had no suspicion of the onion.

"Boo hoo –! I- I- Boo-hoo!" wept Bunter. "Shut the door, old chap! I- I don’t want anybody to see me blubbing. I- I c-can't help it! Boo-hoo! My poor sister Bessie! Boo hoo"

Valentine shut the door, his face grave. Bunter's grief seemed to indicate a serious bereavement.

Valentine had never heard of Bessie Bunter before. Neither was he aware how extremely frail was the thread of family affection in the Bunter tribe. He was prepared to be sympathetic if the fat Owl had suffered some heave loss.

"Your sister Bessie," he asked- "what a happened to her?"

"Pip pip pip- pip-" moaned Bunter.

"What?"

"Pip pip pip-poor Bessie! She's at Cliff House School you know!" groaned Bunter "I've been going to take you over there and introduce you, Valentine old chap; you'd like to see Bessie. She's awfully pretty! We’re all alike in our family, you know! She's j-j-just like me!"

"Oh, my hat" ejaculated Valentine involuntarily.

If Bessie Bunter of Cliff House School was just like her brother Billy, he did not quite see how she could be awfully pretty. However, he did not say so.

"And she's ill!" groaned Bunter.

"Sorry, old chap!" said Valentine. His opinion of Bunter rose a little. A fellow who was reduced to tears because his sister was ill could not be a bad chap. "I hope it's not bad."

"Double plumbago!" groaned Bunter.

Valentine started.

"Double what?"

"Plumbago. It runs in our family," said Bunter. "My grandfather had it bad. My uncle, who was killed in the War died of plumbago."

"Wha-a-at!" gasped Valentine.

"I- I- I- mean, my-my uncle who wasn’t killed in the War," gasped Bunter. "That is, he would have died of plumbago if he hadn't been killed in the War! That's what I really meant to say - galloping plumbago!"

"Do you mean lumbago?" asked Valentine

"Eh- yes! Anyhow, it's double I- I- think treble! And-and there's a touch of celluloid arthritis, too!"

"Oh, my hat!" gasped Valentine. "I’ve heard of rheumatoid arthritis, I think-"

"That's what I mean," said Bunter hastily. "I- I'm so broken-hearted. I don’t know what I’m saying- Pi pip pip poor Bib-Bib-Bib-Bessie! Boo hoo!" Bunter removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. They were red with grief- or onion! "Lying on a sick-bed, you know!" said Bunter. "And-and I've been disappointed about a postal order-"

"Oh!"

"And- and I can’t send her anything!" groaned Bunter. "If I had a pound I’d send her some nice things, you know. She’s practically starved at Cliff House- same as I am here! If a fellow only had a pound!"

Bunter wept again

"But- but is it serious?" asked Valentine dubiously "I believe Plumbago is painful but I didn't think it was dangerous"

"She a got pneumonia as well." explained Bunter- "pneumonia in both arms and the left leg-"

"Oh, great Scott"

"Boo hoo! Boo hoo" Bunter dropped his grief stricken face in his fat hands again and blubbed. "And-and a fellow can't do anything! Boo hoo. "I know you'd lend me a pound if you had one, old fellow, I'm not blaming you because you can’t, I know you’re short of money. Boo hoo! If I could only cut down to Chunkley's and order a few nice things to ho sent to her Boo hoo"

Valentine regarded him doubtfully. Bunter, it was clear was not well up in the list of diseases that afflicted Miss Bunter. But there was no doubt about his emotion - real tears rolled down his plump cheeks" Valentine had hitherto regarded Billy Banter as a fat fatuous greedy, and rather unscrupulous young rascal. Now he thought a great deal better of him

"Look hero Bunter, if ten bob's any good - " he began.

"No; it's a pound, you see," said Bunter "They -"

He broke off quite suddenly before he mentioned the Pro Bono Publico Company.

"What's a pound?" asked Valentine, puzzled.

"I – I - I mean, I - I've made up a-a list of nice things - the things Bessie likes – and - and it comes to exactly a pound. I - I was expecting a postal order for a pound, and now-now- Boo-hoo"

Valentine took out his little cheap notecase. It contained a single pound note, all he had. His small change had gone in the tuckshop at teatime. It cost him rather an effort, but he had a kind and generous heart.

Billy Bunter, with his fat hands over his weeping countenance, watched him through his podgy fingers.

His plump heart beat with hope.

He had doubted whether it would be any use to tell Valentine about the Pro Bono Publico Company and the magnificent offer. He had tried that up and down the Remove without success.

Hence his present stunt – which seemed to he working! Fortunately for Bunter, Jim Valentine was a new fellow, and did not know him so well as the rest of the Remove did.

Valentine detached the pound note from the cheap little case.

"Look here Bunter, here you are!" he said.

Bunter fairly grabbed the pound note. He left off weeping immediately

There was nothing more to weep for.

"Oh, I say, thanks, old chap!" exclaimed the fat Owl. "I say, that’s awfully decent of you! I - I'll let you have this back out of the two-pound-ten."

"Eh – what two-pound-ten?" asked Valentine.

"I – I – I mean. I - I'm expecting a postal order for two-pound-ten," said Bunter hastily. "I - I'll cut off now old fellow. I - I haven't too much time to catch the post."

"You're sending the order to Chunkley's by post?" asked Valentine.

"Eh? Oh, yes, exactly!"

Bunter dodged out of the study. Jim Valentine stood, looking more dubious than ever. However, it was done now, and he dismissed the matter from his mind. He took out his books, and sat down to work at the study table.

Bunter had shut the study door after him - which he did not always take the trouble to do when he left a fellow's study. The shut door prevented Valentine from observing that, in the Remove passage, Billy Bunter drew an envelope from his pocket, ready stamped and addressed. There was a letter inside that envelope, and into the letter Bunter crammed the pound note. He dabbed the envelope with his mouth, stuck it down, and rolled away to the stairs. Three minutes later, that letter was dropped into the school box - in time for the collection

Billy Bunter was still rather red-eyed - that was the inevitable effect of the onion that had produced the tears; but he was grinning with satisfaction as he rolled lack to the house

His letter to the Pro Bono Publico Company was posted now. Twenty useful and valuable articles would come in return, which he was going to sell for fifty shillings. Generously, he made up his fat mind to let Valentine have his pound back out of these handsome profits. That would leave Bunter thirty shillings to the good. It was a happy prospect. Fisher T. Fish looked like having his transatlantic nose put out of joint as the business man of the Remove.