“We couldn’t tell him more than we knew ourselves, sir,” protested Sprawson.
“Not more,” said Heriot, pensively. “No—certainly not more!” It was only his tone that added “if as much”—and only the few who heard through it. “I hope, at any rate, that you got your tea?” said Heriot, with a brisk glance at the clock over the row of cups.
Cave major looked blacker than before, but Sprawson brightened at once.
“Oh, yes, sir, thank you! Lady Augusta sent for us on purpose, and it ended in our handing round the cups and things. That was the redeeming feature of the afternoon. But of course I’m only speaking for myself.”
Cave’s chiselled nostrils spoke for him.
“Well, there seems no more to be said,” remarked Heriot, in valedictory voice. The attentive throng parted before his stride. “I must confess,” he added, however, turning at the door, “that I myself don’t understand the Major’s tactics altogether—if you’ve reported him fully. I can’t help thinking that something or other has escaped your memory. Otherwise it sounds to me rather like a practical joke at your expense. But I should be sorry to suspect a real humorist, like Major Mangles, of that very poor form of humour, unless”—a moment’s pause, with twinkling glasses—“unless it were as a sort of payment in kind. That’s the only excuse for practical joking, in my opinion; and now I think we can let the whole subject drop. I only hope that the next time some knave, or fool, thinks of breaking into my house, he’ll have the pluck to come when I’m at home. Good-night all!”
The house filtered out into the quad, drifted over to the studies, and presently back again to bed, with few comments and less laughter; and that night there was little talk but much constraint in both the top and lower dormitories, ruled respectively by Sprawson and Cave major. Only in the little one, overlooking the street, was the topic in everybody’s mind on anybody’s lips; and there it was monopolised by Crabtree, who reviewed the entire episode in mordant monologue, broken only by the shaking of the bed beneath his fits of helpless mirth.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FUN OF THE FAIR
There were three days in the year when the venerable market-place was out of bounds, all but the draggled ribbon of pavement running round it and the few shops opening thereon. The rest was monopolised and profaned by the vans and booths of a travelling fair, which reached the town usually about the second week in March. The school took little notice of the tawdry encampment and its boorish revels; but the incessant strains of a steam merry-go-round became part of the place for the time being, and made night especially hideous in the town houses nearest the scene.
Nearest of all was Heriot’s house, and greatest of all sufferers the four boys in the little top room with the dormer window over the street. Jan was still one of them, and Bingley another. But Joyce had left, and Crabtree had taken charge of one of the long dormitories overlooking the quad. Chips Carpenter and a new boy had succeeded to their partitions; and if in one case the intellectual loss was irreparable, in the other that of an incorrigible vocabulary was perhaps less to be deplored.