"You will forgive me, comrade," he said, in his most buttery tones, "but I had to take them off. My feet got very hot."
"Your feet got hot?"
"Yes—just a physical weakness of mine. Whenever it occurs I simply have to take my boots off. I can't bear them."
"So you are hot-footed as well as hot-headed!" said Mr. Salmon.
The class simply roared. They kicked their feet, and rattled rulers on the desk. They always made a stupendous row whenever Mr. Salmon cracked one of his very mild jokes, and the genial house-master was so very deaf that the din came to his ears in the form of a loud titter, which had always pleased him greatly. The noise they made now could be heard a couple of corridors away, but Mr. Salmon nodded and smiled, satisfied with the reception of his sally.
"Go back to your seat, boy," he said, restored to good humour once more. "If your feet feel warm, it is doubtless because you wear such very hot socks."
At this remark there was a repetition of the hideous row; and Patch strolled back to his seat and his model-making without the slightest concern.
After "lights-out" that night the four pals got out of their dormitory, and in slippers made their way down to the boot-room, where they tumbled around among boots and blacking and brushes, before Patch applied a light to a fragment of candle that shed a flickering illumination over the rows of neatly cleaned boots.
"Now for it," said Billy Faraday, and without any more ado they set to work to examine the great stack of boots. It was fully half an hour before they had run through the pile, and then they had drawn a blank.
"It's no go," said Jack Symonds. "How now, professor?"