“This is all rather news to me,” remarked Adams.
“Well, sir, something had to be done,” said David, “or the whole house would have gone to pot. Why, the fags might have taken it into their heads to cheek fifth form next when they’d finished with the sixth, and there would have been trouble. You see, most of the big fellows in the house are in the fifth. That’s the way the Court of Appeal started.”
“Go on,” said Adams.
“Well, the next thing was—oh, I must tell you this—one night a couple of juniors made an apple-pie bed for Gregson. Awful cheek! So naturally he whacked them soundly and formally, and they went to Manton, and told him that Gregson had been whacking them. So round comes Manton and tells Gregson, before the whole dormitory, and him captain of football, that he’s no right to, as he wasn’t a prefect. And of course Gregson said he’d heard that a little before Manton had caned Crossley (that was the Babbington affair) and that he hadn’t any right to cane a prefect. That’s the sort of thing that went on all the first weeks of this half, sir; there’d have been a regular revolution unless we’d done something. And so I say that the Court of Appeal is more to support authority than the other way about.”
“Well, now we’ll take the other way about,” said Adams. “I mean I want to know about the cases in which you upset the prefect’s authority.”
David thought for a moment.
“Well, sir, those two, Manton and Crossley, did all sorts of things we’re not accustomed to have prefects doing,” he said. “When they went the round of the studies during preparation to see that we were working, they used to put on slippers and open the door quick to try and catch you doing nothing; and of course they often did. Well, that’s not playing the game, sir. Frank always came clumping along, and he always tapped at your door. It was just the same when they went the rounds of dormitories after lights were out. Slippers! You don’t do any good by spying, you know; you won’t stop fellows ragging or—or anything else, that sort of way. It only means that two can play at that game, and if you want to do anything of the kind that you shouldn’t, you just put a sentinel at the door. Spying just encourages fellows to break rules. Smoking, too.”
“Well, smoking?” said Adams.
“Crossley suspected a certain fellow of smoking, and one day, when he was out, he went and looked in his table drawer and found a pipe there. Now, sir, that sort of thing’s all rot. He wanted to whack him for it, and the fellow appealed. So naturally we gave it in his favour when it came out that Crossley had looked in his private drawer. You wouldn’t dream of doing it yourself, sir. Naturally not. So of course we reversed Crossley’s sentence, and wouldn’t let him be whacked.”
“Did you three appoint yourself the Court?” asked Adams.