"I say, look here, old chap, you needn't tell anyone, but I am going out to Pack Monday Fair; it will be some rag!"
The sensation he caused was highly gratifying. By prayers all his friends and most of his acquaintances knew of it. Of course they would keep it secret. But Gordon knew well that by break next day it would be round the outhouses, and he looked forward to the number of questions he would get asked. To be the hero of an impending escapade was pleasant.
"I say, Davenport," he said in his dormitory that evening, "I am going out to the fair on Monday."
Davenport said nothing, and showed no sign of surprise. Gordon was disappointed.
"Well, what do you think of it?" he said at last.
"That you are a sillier ass than I thought you were," said Davenport.
And as Gordon lay thinking over everything in the dark, he came to the conclusion that Davenport was not so very far wrong after all.
Cold and nervous, Gordon waited for Rudd in the dark boot-hole under the Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by the V. A green.
There was the sound of feet on the stairs. It seemed to Gordon as if they were bound to wake the whole house. Rudd's figure was framed black in the doorway.