Burr Junior

Burr Junior, by G. Manville
Fenn

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Title: Burr Junior
Author: G. Manville Fenn
Illustrator: Harold C. Earnshaw
Release Date: May 4, 2007 [EBook #21294]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURR
JUNIOR ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Burr Junior, by George Manville Fenn.
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I thought that it was unusual for Manville Fenn to set a novel in a boys'
boarding school, since I had become used to exotic settings in Malaysia,
or South America, for his tension-filled novels. Here he certainly does
not disappoint if it's tension and suspense you are expecting of him. The
last few chapters, in particular, are extremely nail-biting, but the book
is quite hard to put down at any point.
It is Burr who is telling the story, and from his first day at the school he
is friendly with Mercer, who is not good at his school work, but who
knows a great deal about natural history, and imparts it to Burr, and of
course to the readers as well. There is a gang of other boys who are
inclined to bully, and at first they make life misery for Burr and
Mercer--but this is soon got over.
Other important figures are Hopley, the gamekeeper; his daughter
Polly; the school Cook; Lomax, the school drill-sergeant; Magglin, a
ne'er-do-well and poacher; Dr Browne, the headmaster, and Mrs
Browne; Rebble and Hasnip, ushers at the school; Burr's mother, and
his uncle, Colonel Seaborough; and the local big landowner, General
Sir Hawkhurst Rye.
It was a very enjoyable book to transcribe, and I am sure you will enjoy
it. NH
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BURR JUNIOR, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
"There'll be such a game directly. Just listen to old Dicksee."
I was very low-spirited, but, as the bright, good-looking lad at my side
nudged me with his elbow, I turned from casting my eyes round the
great bare oak-panelled room, with its long desks, to the kind of pulpit
at the lower end, facing a bigger and more important-looking erection

at the upper end, standing upon a broad dais raised a foot above the rest
of the room. For this had been the banqueting hall of Meade Place, in
the good old times of James the First, when its owner little thought it
would ever be the schoolroom of Dr Browne's "Boarding Establishment
for Gentlemen's Sons." In fact, there was a broad opening now, with a
sliding door, right through the thick wall into the kitchen, so my
companion told me, and that I should see the shoulders of mutton slip
through there at dinner-time.
So I looked at the lower pulpit, in which sat Mr Rebble, one of the
ushers, a lank, pale-faced, haggard man, with a dotting of freckles, light
eyebrows, and pale red hair which stood up straight like that upon a
clothes-brush.
He was resting his elbows on the desk and wiping his hands one over
the other, as if the air was water and he had a piece of soap between his
palms. By him was a boy with a book, reading in a highly-pitched
voice which did not seem to fit him, being, like his clothes, too small
for such a big fellow, with his broad face and forehead all wrinkled up
into puckers with the exertion of reading.
"Tchish! tchish! Silence!" said Mr Rebble, giving three stamps on the
floor. "Now go on, Dicksee."
"I say, do listen," said the boy by my side. "He isn't well, and I gave
him a dose this morning."
"You did?" I said. "You hit him?"
"No, no," said the boy, laughing. "I often do though--a miserable sneak.
I gave him a dose of medicine. He had been eating too many of Polly
Hopley's cakes. My father is a doctor!" he added importantly.
"Oh!" I said.
"I say, do listen. Did you ever hear such a whine?"
As he spoke, I heard the big, stoutly-built boy give a tremendous sniff,

and then go on reading.
"I love Penny Lope--Penny Lope is loved by me."
"Pen-el-o-pe!" cried the usher angrily, as he snatched the book from the
boy's hands, closed it, and boxed his ears with it, right and left, over
and over again. "You dumkopf!" he shouted; "you muddy-brained ass!
you'll never learn anything. You're more trouble than all the rest of the
boys put together. There, be off to your seat, and write that piece out