“I don’t agree with ‘little beast,’ ” said Adams, “but I agree that probably Manton told him. I really don’t see what else the Head of the house could do. Now I want to hear what the Court of Appeal have to say about themselves, just as I shall want to know what the prefects say about them. Gregson and Bags are quite safe in your hands as advocatus—well, perhaps, not quite diaboli. You can trust me for that.”
David raised himself and sat Turk-fashion with crossed legs in the big basket-chair.
“It’s rather a long story, sir, if I’m to tell it from the beginning,” he said.
“Never mind.”
“Well, you see, sir, there was such an awful change in the house when Frank and Cruikshank left at the end of last half. You see, they were proper prefects; they used their authority properly, and it was jolly well necessary to respect it. You couldn’t cheek fellows like them, when they gave orders; it simply couldn’t happen. And it was so frantically different to get little clever squirts like Manton and Crossley in authority instead. They couldn’t keep order a hang; the whole house would have been out of hand in no time. You’ll see that the Court of Appeal was really meant to preserve order. Why, the very fags used to laugh at them. One of them put soap in Manton’s kettle one day, and when it boiled it came bubbling out of the spout like blowing soap-bubbles. You never saw anything so funny. But the Court of Appeal stopped that.”
Adams preserved his gravity.
“That’s rather a new light,” he said. “Go on, David. You needn’t bring in names if you think you’d better not. But it’s only fair that the Head should know your side of the question, as he has heard Manton’s.”
David got red in the face.
“Manton’s a bl—— filthy little sneak,” he observed. “Also, I bet he hasn’t told the Head the truth.”
“He probably told him the truth, as it struck him,” said Adams. “It strikes you differently. But he didn’t sneak as you think. The Head got his first news about the Court of Appeal from quite another source.”