Sir, by bringing
lizards and white rats to school?" Tommy said, "Yes, Sir," and then,
after thinking for fully three seconds, he said he had a ferret at home,
and did the Headmaster know how to hold a ferret so that it couldn't
bite you?

It seems that ferrets, if they once get hold of your thumb, never let
go--_not never_--and that you have to force their jaws open with a
penholder; also ferrets exhibit a marked preference for thumbs. All this
information Tommy conveyed without drawing a breath. The Headmaster
said, "Quite so, my boy, quite so. But don't you know it is extremely
reprehensible conduct to bring animals to school in your pocket?" Well,
you see, that is how Tommy's mother talks to him, so he knew what to do,
and, looking up into the Headmaster's face with that wistful look of
his, he imparted the deep secret that he had a tortoise.

Tortoises, the Headmaster learnt, had a way of getting lost among the
cabbages, but, if you wanted to prevent them from straying, all you had
to do was to turn them over on their backs and put a piece of brown
paper over them for their feet to play with. Also they were stuck fast
in their shells, because Tommy had tried. A boy had told Tommy that
tortoises laid eggs, but although Tommy had showed his tortoise a hen's
egg and then put the tortoise in a nice new nest the tortoise had taken
no step in the matter.

However, Tommy promised never to bring any more animals to school and to
express his sorrow to Miss Price. And he was richer by sixpence when the
interview closed.

At parting, Tommy offered to lend the Headmaster his tortoise for a
week, and told him that, if he stood for a whole hour on its back, it
wouldn't hurt it, because Tommy had trained it; also it never crawled
out of your pocket.

Tommy apologised to Miss Price for bringing the white rats to
school--they weren't white rats really, not to look at; they were rather
piebald through constant association with ink. Also he brought an apple
and showed her how, by holding it a certain way whilst eating it, she
would miss the bad part. In further sign of amity he showed her his
knife, and especially that instrument in it which was used for removing
stones from horses' hoofs. Not that Tommy had removed many stones from
horses' hoofs, not very many, but if you had a tooth that was loose it
was very helpful. Miss Price gave him a new threepenny bit, and Tommy
tried hard to please her in arithmetic by reducing inches