“Splendid,” murmured Michael.
A silence followed this exchange of courtesies. The bonfire was beginning to die down, but nobody ventured under the Dean’s eye to put on more faggots. Under-porters were seen drawing near with pails of water, and though a cushion aimed from a window upset one pail, very soon the bonfire was a miserable mess of smoking ashes and the moon resumed her glory. From an upper window some second-year men chanted in a ridiculous monotone:
“The Dean—he was the Dean—he was the Dean—he was the Dean! The Dean—he was the Dean he was—the Dean he was—the Dean!!”
Mr. Ambrose did not bother to look up in the direction of the glee, but took another glance at Michael, Lonsdale, Grainger and the other stalwarts. Then he turned away.
“Good night,” Lonsdale called after the retreating figure of the tall hunched don, and not being successful in luring him back, he poured his scorn upon the defaulters safe in their rooms above.
“You are a lot of rotters. Come down and make another.”
But the freshmen were not yet sufficiently hardy to do this. One by one they melted away, and Lonsdale marked his contempt for their pusillanimity by throwing two syphons and his gown into the Warden’s garden. After which he invited Michael and his fellow die-hards to drink a glass of port in his rooms. Here for an hour they sat, discussing their contemporaries.
In the morning Shadbolt was asked if anybody had been hauled for last night’s bonner.
“Mr. Fane, Mr. Grainger and the Honorable Lonsdale,” he informed the inquirer. Together those three interviewed the Dean.
“Two guineas each,” he announced after a brief homily on the foolishness and inconvenience of keeping everybody up on the first Sunday of term. “And if you feel aggrieved, you can get up a subscription among your co-lunatics to defray your expenses.”