"Higgins is a brick," the words went. "Masters saw him to-night after prep and just before chapel and Higgins said he was reddy and didn't want twenty five bob but twenty and that's awfully decent of him and the car's going to be wating over by the windmil at twelve. Won't it be ripping, eh. There's heaps of room for the lot of us and Higgins'll have smokes. Susanne says they're nesessary to him and'll make him look like a blud, and Higgins knows a shop where we can get a blow out for next to nothing. There a bob each to pay to go into the plais where the aroplaynes fly, but Higgins can manage to pass us in free as his frend's the gatekeeper. So all's serene and to-morrow'll be ripping.
"The Firm."
That was the communication. Sturton handled it and turned it over curiously. As a matter of fact, he was rather amused at these notes so constantly passing. It not being so very long since he himself was a youngster, he had a friendly recollection of his own eccentricities.
"What's this?" he asked sternly, causing the pyjamaed Clive to quake. "One would think you young donkeys hadn't a chance for gassing during the daytime. As it is, I know this sort of thing goes on the whole of prep. time. Look here, Darrell, an hour's drill to-morrow."
An hour's drill. Why, that meant that Clive, with a number of other forlorn individuals subjected to the same punishment for their various crimes, would have to assemble in the quad after dinner, and there be marched to and fro and round and round by a prefect as weary of the task as they were. At least, that was the general rule. Sometimes the commander of this squad was a martinet. Sometimes the master for the week wreaked his vengeance on boys in general and these unhappy wights in particular by taking the quad himself, or standing at the entrance to the quad, his mere presence stimulating the prefect till the boys undergoing punishment groaned at the numerous orders to "right wheel," "left wheel," "form line," "form fours." Form every sort of formation that the drill-book allows for or the fertile mind of an ingenious prefect can devise. And Canning was the master for the week, and Rawlings the brute of a prefect who would be on duty on the morrow.
Clive groaned and shivered.
"But to-morrow's a saint's day, Sturton," he ventured in tones of protest.
"All the better. You'll want something to do. Time hangs heavy with you youngsters on saints' days. A drill'll keep you out of mischief."
"But——"
"What's in this precious note?" asked Sturton, holding it up to the gaslight. "Secrets? Let's see 'em."
He handed the note to Clive and invited him to open the folded paper. That young fellow went a sickly yellow colour. The drill could be got over, he reflected. He could miss it. He'd have to do it every day after, that was certain, and Sturton might invite Harvey to give him a slogging. But the cause was worth this sacrifice. But to open the note and show Sturton the contents meant wrecking the whole affair.