bustling scene.
Sammy had by this time disposed of the clockwork rat, and was now standing, like Marius, among the ruins barking triumphantly.
The banging on Mr. Downing’s desk resembled thunder. It rose above all the other noises till in time they gave up the competition and died away.
Mr. Downing shot out orders, threats, and penalties with the rapidity of a Maxim gun.
“Stone, sit down! Donovan, if you do not sit down, you will be severely punished. Henderson, one hundred lines for gross disorder! Windham, the same! Go to your seat, Vincent. What are you doing, Broughton-Knight? I will not have this disgraceful noise and disorder! The meeting is at an end; go quietly from the room, all of you. Jackson and Wilson, remain.
Crash!
“Wolferstan, I distinctly saw you upset that blackboard with a movement of your hand—one hundred lines. Go quietly from the room, everybody.”
The meeting dispersed.
“Jackson and Wilson, come here. What’s the meaning of this disgraceful conduct? Put that dog out of the room, Jackson.”
Mike removed the yelling Sammy and shut the door on him.
“Well, Wilson?”
“Please, sir, I was playing with a clockwork rat–-“
“What business have you to be playing with clockwork rats?”
“Then I remembered,” said Mike, “that I had left my Horace in my desk, so I came in–-“
“And by a fluke, sir,” said Wilson, as one who tells of strange things, “the rat happened to be pointing in the same direction, so he came in, too.”
“I met Sammy on the gravel outside and he followed me.”
“I tried to collar him, but when you told me to come in, sir, I had to let him go, and he came in after the rat.”
It was plain to Mr. Downing that the burden of sin was shared equally by both culprits. Wilson had supplied the rat, Mike the dog; but Mr. Downing liked Wilson and disliked Mike. Wilson was in the Fire Brigade, frivolous at times, it was true, but nevertheless a member. Also he kept wicket for the school. Mike was a member of the Archaeological Society, and had refused to play cricket.
Mr. Downing allowed these facts to influence him in passing sentence.
“One hundred lines, Wilson,” he said. “You may go.”
Wilson departed with the air of a man who has had a great deal of fun, and paid very little for it.
Mr. Downing turned to Mike. “You will stay in on Saturday afternoon, Jackson; it will interfere with your Archaeological studies, I fear, but it may teach you that we have no room at Sedleigh for boys who spend their time loafing about and making themselves a nuisance. We are a keen school; this is no place for boys who do nothing but waste their time. That will do, Jackson.”
And Mr. Downing walked out of the room. In affairs of this kind a master has a habit of getting the last word.
CHAPTER XXXIX
ACHILLES LEAVES HIS TENT
They say misfortunes never come singly. As Mike sat brooding over his wrongs in his study, after the Sammy incident, Jellicoe came into the room, and, without preamble, asked for the loan of a sovereign.
When one has been in the habit of confining one’s lendings and borrowings to sixpences and shillings, a request for a sovereign comes as something of a blow.
“What on earth for?” asked Mike.
“I say, do you mind if I don’t tell you? I don’t want to tell anybody. The fact is, I’m in a beastly hole.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Mike. “As a matter of fact, I do happen to have a quid. You can freeze on to it, if you like. But it’s about all I have got, so don’t be shy about paying it back.”
Jellicoe was profuse in his thanks, and disappeared in a cloud of gratitude.
Mike felt that Fate was treating him badly. Being kept in on Saturday meant that he would be unable to turn out for Little Borlock against Claythorpe, the return match. In the previous game he had scored ninety-eight, and there was a lob bowler in the Claythorpe ranks whom he was particularly anxious to meet again. Having to yield a sovereign to Jellicoe—why on earth did the man want all that?—meant that, unless a carefully worded letter to his brother Bob at Oxford had the desired effect, he would be practically penniless for weeks.
In a gloomy frame of mind he sat down to write to Bob, who was playing regularly for the ‘Varsity this season, and only the previous week had made a century against Sussex, so might be expected to be in a sufficiently softened mood to advance the needful. (Which, it may be stated at once, he did, by return of post.)
Mike was struggling with the opening sentences of this letter—he was never a very ready writer—when Stone and Robinson burst into the room.
Mike put down his pen, and got up. He was in warlike mood, and welcomed the intrusion. If Stone and Robinson wanted battle, they should have it.
But the motives of the expedition were obviously friendly. Stone beamed. Robinson was laughing.
