"Labouring for peace—why, Brady, that's been your little task!" exclaimed Vickers. "And a noble one"—here he put on the "West voice". "Have you thought of it in that light, my boy? To labour for peace! We might all do worse. Conceive, for instance, of working for love!"
Jack laughed noisily, and called Vickers "a silly old loony". But he blushed at the same time. And he went to sleep that night feeling uncommonly hopeful.
When, in short jerky phrases, he broke to Hannah the plan he had devised, the maid was so grateful and "took aback", as she said, as to become for the moment half-hysterical; but soon rallying her common sense, she sat down and penned a note to her father, to accompany the young gentlemen's communication. Hannah's spelling, handwriting, and grammar were all very shaky, but it is a fact that Mr. J. Thompson, Nurseryman, found her letter a help in throwing light upon the "formal, business" document.
CHAPTER IX
LOST—A NAME
Of course Jack's task was only half accomplished. And the second half was somewhat harder than he had anticipated. When in the morning he met the day-scholars, they were not as eager for a reconciliation as he would have liked to find them.
Mason had come armed with a handful of wild barley-grass, or "crawly", as it was better known among the boys.
"Dictée this morning," he said with a sly wink.
In Monsieur Blonde's class, dictation offered great possibilities to a quick writer, with a supply of crawly. When heads are bent, what a chance down the collar for a deft hand! And the Monsieur was very short-sighted.