“Yes, brother Crabtree,” he said, “and how soap-bubbles came out of Mr. Manton’s kettle, though he had not meant to wash.”
David chimed in.
“And we all remember, my learned brother,” he said, “how the house was a perfect bear-garden for the first month of this term before we started our worshipful Court, and how——”
David turned to Manton.
“Perhaps you didn’t tell the Head that,” he said. “We shall. We shall tell him how you couldn’t get lines done for you, till we enforced the authority you hadn’t got. We shall say how you walk round the house in slippers, and when you get back to your own fuggy studies you daren’t walk straight in for fear of finding a booby-trap come down on your mangy heads. Jolly wise precaution, too, on your part. We shall tell the Head all that.”
David licked his lips, as he warmed to his work. He took Jevons’s appeal off the table in front of him.
“I shall take this to the Head, and read it him,” he said. “Just listen: pretty dignified position for you, isn’t it? ‘To the Court of Appeal. Please Blaize, Manton got an awful soaker because somebody else put my sponge on the top of his door, which soused him; and because it was my sponge he says he’ll whack me unless I find out who did it and tell him, which isn’t fair, because it’s not my business. So I appeal. M. C. Jevons.’ ”
Manton was getting a little rattled. Otherwise he would not have done anything so foolish as try to grab this paper. David whisked it away.
“I shall say, too, that you tried to get hold of this,” he said. “Better sit down, Manton. That’s right. And I shall tell him that your notion of authority is to look in a fellow’s private drawer when he’s out, to see if you can nail a pipe.”
“I never did,” said Manton wildly. “That was Crossley.”