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but they had been known to generations of school-boys as
Sighs, Tar, Winks, Squirts, and Pat.
They all knew Tom Perkins. The first thing about him
was that he was not a gentleman. They remembered him
quite well. He was a small, dark boy, with untidy black hair
and large eyes. He looked like a gipsy. He had come to the
school as a day-boy, with the best scholarship on their en-
dowment, so that his education had cost him nothing. Of
course he was brilliant. At every Speech-Day he was loaded
with prizes. He was their show-boy, and they remembered
now bitterly their fear that he would try to get some schol-
arship at one of the larger public schools and so pass out of
their hands. Dr. Fleming had gone to the linendraper his
father—they all remembered the shop, Perkins and Cooper,
in St. Catherine’s Street—and said he hoped Tom would
remain with them till he went to Oxford. The school was
Perkins and Cooper’s best customer, and Mr. Perkins was
only too glad to give the required assurance. Tom Perkins
continued to triumph, he was the finest classical scholar that
Dr. Fleming remembered, and on leaving the school took
with him the most valuable scholarship they had to offer.
He got another at Magdalen and settled down to a brilliant
career at the University. The school magazine recorded the
distinctions he achieved year after year, and when he got
his double first Dr. Fleming himself wrote a few words of
eulogy on the front page. It was with greater satisfaction
that they welcomed his success, since Perkins and Cooper
had fallen upon evil days: Cooper drank like a fish, and just
before Tom Perkins took his degree the linendrapers filed

Of Human Bondage