'Open this door at once,' thundered someone on the other side, while lock and hinge rattled beneath the besieger's hands.
'Don't you wish you may get it, old chap,' 'Shove away, and be hanged to you,' 'Try your skull against the panel, blockhead,' and several similar remarks, were now hurled at the enemy by those in the study. Meanwhile, preparations for repelling an assault were rapidly being made.
'Boys, open this door, don't you know who is speaking to you?' said the voice once more.
'Oh yes, we know,' laughed Snap, 'and we are getting ready to receive you, sir.'
'Deuced well old Legs imitates the Head, doesn't he?' whispered Billy Winthrop.
'Not badly,' answered Snap in the same tone. 'Have you got everything ready?' he added.
'Yes,' said Billy; 'but let me try my fire-arm first,' and, dipping the nose of a large squirt into the inkpot, he filled it, and then discharged it at a venture through the key-hole. The result was satisfactory. From the sounds of anger and hasty retreat in the passages the boys guessed that the shot had told, and indulged in a burst of triumphant laughter in consequence. But the enemy was back again in a minute wrenching furiously at the door, which now began to give.
'Let us die in the breach,' cried Snap, catching up a large mop, which he had used earlier in the day to clean his study floor, and emptying over it the remains of the cold coffee. 'Billy, stand by with your blunderbuss. Simpson, at the next shove let the door go!' he whispered, and the boys took up their places—Snap with his mop in rest opposite the entrance, Simpson with his hand on the key, and Billy's deadly weapon peeping over his leader's shoulder. At the next assault Simpson let the door go, and Hales rushed headlong out to meet the foe, getting the whole of Billy's charge down the back of his neck as he went. Someone knocked up the mop, so that it cannoned from him to another of the attacking party, whom it took fairly in the face, plastering him up against the opposite wall, a full-length portrait of 'the Head!'
For once Snap's spirits deserted him. The mop fell from his nerveless hand. He even forgot to say that he did not do it. It was too gross a sin even for a schoolboy to find excuses for. Nor had 'the Head' much to say—partly, perhaps, because 'mops and coffee' was not a favourite dish with him, and he had had rather more of it at his first essay than he cared to swallow, and partly, no doubt, because (diplomat though he was) for the life of him he could not remember what was the dignified thing to do under such unusual circumstances. The Sergeant recovered himself first.
'They've all been smoking, Sir!' he asserted maliciously. 'I suppose I'd better take their pipes.'