It may be said with truth and fairness that Susanne was by no means prejudiced. He didn't like Rawlings, and never had done so. More than that, Rawlings was decidedly unpopular, and had been so from the day when the ranks of the Old Firm had been recruited. Had he been different, more friendly and less underhanded, he would most certainly have been captain of the school. As it was the Sixth voted en masse against him, a fact which Rawlings did not fail to perceive. It made him furious. He hated his fellow prefects, detested the masters, and was stupidly and outrageously jealous of them all. And the presence of this unpopular fellow, older than any of the others in Upper Sixth, was a damper to their enjoyment. He was a damper elsewhere. In East he was head prefect, and a martinet. He seemed to air there all the high-handed manners he loved so much, and which were forbidden in his class-room. Why he remained on at the school was a problem which none could solve. But there he was, barred by the Sixth, detested by the juniors in his dormitory, and disliked by not a few of the masters.
Clive, too, had ascended to the Upper Sixth. It may be said, indeed, that his rise had been meteoric. Of a sudden he had taken most seriously to work, had developed an acuteness hitherto unsuspected, and much to the delight of Old B., who coached him, had rushed his way up the school till now he was the youngest fellow in his form. A prefect also, he was senior in his old dormitory, reigning where Sturton had once held sway.
Masters had managed to crawl to the Lower Sixth, and was noted in the school more for games than for lessons. His sturdy, genial figure attracted the admiring eye of many a junior as he tramped the corridor, and when we admit that he was still as much a boy as ever, we do no harm to his reputation. Trendall, now an excellent fellow, was with Susanne and Bert in the Upper Sixth, while Hugh, now Ranleigh's chief exponent of gymnastics, was in the Upper Fifth.
It seemed, in fact, that nothing more could be wanted by the Old Firm and their fellows at Ranleigh to complete their happiness, and that something approaching an earthquake would be needed to upset their equanimity. However, it is the unexpected which always happens, and one night Ranleigh was stirred to the very depths of its foundations.
"Darrell—I say, Darrell," whispered a tremulous voice somewhere near the hour of midnight, while a ghost-like figure bent over him. "Darrell, please, are you awake?"
Clive wasn't. He stirred uneasily at the touch of this junior's hand, for Parfit, the boy who had stolen across from his bed to wake him, was hardly eleven years of age. Naturally timid at the thought of disturbing so august a person as the head prefect of his dormitory, Parfit quaked as Clive rolled over on to his other side and snored. Then, as if forced on by desperation, the lad shook him with a heavy hand.
"Darrell, please," he called. "I—I——"
"Hullo!" Clive sat up, gaping and rubbing his eyes. "Bell gone! Eh? Then what the dickens——! Why, it's Parfit."
"Please, Darrell," said the youth, "I'm awfully sorry for waking you, but——"
"You'll need your sorrow, young un," came the none too friendly interruption, for Clive, like others, objected to be roused in the middle of the night without due reason. Not that he was hard with his juniors. Indeed, he was always jovial with them.