"Hold your tongue, baby! Cheek me again, and you'll get smacked. We must see that all you duckies go to bed at twelve for a little nap. You shall have a nice beauty-sleep, you shall!"
"Don't answer! Swallow it down!" muttered Jack Brady, laying his hand on Simmons's shoulder. "Let 'em have the last word if they're stuck on it. We're only wasting breath."
"It's all very well, Brady, but they have treated us abominably! We'd done nothing to them." Ethelbert Hughes, who said this in a low voice, was Simmons's special chum, though a great contrast, being tall and fair, with a gentle, quiet manner.
"Still, there's nothing gained by bandying names," returned Brady. "And it isn't even amusing to listen to. A fellow's seldom funny and furious at the same time.
"I don't care about words," said Mason, giving a fierce kick to the basket. "I'm quite ready to bandy thumps, if they prefer it. But they deserve trouncing in some way for a caddish trick like this."
"It was a bit rough on us, but they only meant it as a joke," persisted Brady. "We must pay them back in joke, and then it'll be all right."
"Will it?" growled Bacon. "I know better. Why, they hate day-boys like poison, and they'll let you all feel it too. I had a nice dose of it last term, and I'm jolly glad there are some more of you to share it with me this time."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" said a boy called Armitage. "And are they all such donkeys as to care whether we sleep here or not?"
"They're all such sheep as to follow the same track blindly, and not dare to act on their own hook," replied Bacon. "It's the fashion to run down day-boys, that's all. But it's a beastly shame, and I almost wish West hadn't let me in."
"Oh, rubbish!" said Brady. "Fashions change quickly. We'll have a ripping time, in spite of everybody."