“Isn’t there none left?” inquired Porcher. “Mr. Lonsdale, sir, you’d better keep a bit quiet. The Sub-Warden’s looking very savage—very savage indeed.”
At this moment Maurice Avery came hurrying in to dinner.
“Oh, sconce him!” shouted everybody. “It’s nearly five-and-twenty past.”
“Couldn’t help it,” said Maurice very importantly. “Just been seeing the first number of the O.L.G. through the press.”
“By gad,” said Lonsdale. “It’s a way we have in the Buffs and the Forty Two’th. Look here, have we all got to buy this rotten paper of yours? What’s it going to cost?”
“A shilling,” said Maurice modestly.
“A bob!” cried Lonsdale. “But, my dear old ink-slinger, I can buy the five-o’clock Star for a half-penny.”
Maurice had to put up with a good deal of chaff from everybody that night.
“Let’s have the program,” Sinclair suggested.
The editor was so much elated at the prospect of to-morrow’s great event that he rashly produced from his pocket the contents bill, which Lonsdale seized and immediately began to read out: