“I do play well, don’t I?” he admitted, when he had finished. “It always surprises me; just think what I could do if I really studied—hard, I mean,” he added lightly.
“Good heavens! man,” exclaimed Haydock, “aren’t you going to take highest honours in music? Why, you can do anything!” Haydock considered his own little thumpings important only in so far as they enabled him to understand a talent like Bancroft’s.
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Dilford, with indifference. “My father wants me to go to work; I don’t suppose I’ll be here long.”
“Won’t you, really? I knew that Billy wasn’t going to stay; but I had an idea you would.” Haydock alluded to Billy’s probable departure with the emotion he would have displayed had he been predicting a change in the weather.
Billy pricked up his ears and his eyebrows at once. “What makes you say that?” he demanded quickly. Even Dilford dropped his customary listlessness, and looked interested.
“Why—I thought it was more or less settled.” The senior turned from one to the other in slow surprise, “If I’ve said anything I ought not to have—given things away, I mean—I’m awfully sorry. But perhaps they were mistaken.” Billy’s face, across which flitted a shade of anxiety, told him that he was perfectly safe in making a “bluff” at changing the subject.
“No, no!” Billy jerked out, impatiently; “go on! who are you talking about? You’ve heard something important,” something that didn’t emanate from John, he was thinking. “What did they say? I insist on knowing.”
“It really wasn’t much; merely that one or two of the instructors—I know some of the younger ones rather well—seemed to think that you wouldn’t—that in fact you couldn’t be with us after the midyears. That’s all. I thought you knew.”
“You’re bitched all right, all right,” laughed Bancroft.
“They said that, did they?” Billy let fall these words portentously; it was as if he were on the point of framing a great resolution.