Jack turned rather pale, and pinched the edge of the table nervously. His eyes wandered from face to face. All were vexed, all displeased. Then, with a sudden impulse he sprang to his feet, and spoke his mind—rapidly, earnestly.
"Look here, I can't understand it! What makes you all so beastly to the day-boys—to my pals? You began it, not they! They came to Brincliffe without the least idea of any unfriendly feeling, and you hated them before you'd seen them or heard their names. Is that fair—straight—English? If it were, I'd wish to be French or German. Where's the fun in this constant worrying of each other? As boarders, it's your place to put out a hand first, and I think I can promise that the day-boys will shake it. Bah! I know I can never talk you round; it's no good attempting to. I'm not in a comic mood, and can't make you laugh, like Cadbury, and I haven't Vickers's gift of the gab. But wasn't last Friday's lesson enough? Wasn't the sight of that knife—"
"Hush!" came from many mouths.
"Oh, we want to forget it! Yes, we don't want to talk about it, I know. But I've got to this once. If there had been an accident—to Armitage—it wouldn't have been wholly the March Hare's fault. It was those who first started the quarrel between boarders and day-boys, those who put the notion of ill-feeling into his silly little head. I see you're thinking of the swimming-baths, and Toppin's dive. Now I happen to know, and Toppin can bear me out, that the kid asked to be pushed, and that Armitage would have saved him next moment if the March Hare hadn't jumped in and hindered things. And everyone of you who have listened and nodded to the March Hare's tale have added coal to the fire you might have quenched in a moment. And—and—and—and—" poor Jack was shaking and stammering with excitement, "what—what if it had—ended in—"
But there he sat down, leaving his sentence unfinished.
Cadbury was the first to reply, and that was not at once. Slowly he ruled a long, thick, black line in his exercise-book, then, pushing his chair away from the table, tilted it back, and spoke:
"Well, I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I'll tell you what I do. Brady's last sentence was certainly not fluent, and I shouldn't care to have to analyse it. As for the jokes in it, they were about as plentiful as wasps in January. All that's true enough. Still, nevertheless, speaking for my humble self, he thrust home. You did, Jack, you beggar! You'd no business to, but you actually had the impudence to make me feel ashamed of myself. And, of course, I don't know what you others will say, but I vote we bury the hatchet in old Thompson's biggest flower-pot. Who's with me?"
"I am!"
"I am!"