Jack nodded. He really dared not speak, for fear Mason should take it into his head to go exactly contrary to him.
Hurrah! The cigar was taken!
From that moment Cadbury and Jack turned themselves into a couple of the maddest, silliest clowns imaginable. But there was method in their madness. Though they did not even own it to each other, they were making themselves ridiculous and foolish to prevent the rest from feeling so. Boys loathe sentiment, and many a quarrel drifts on and on, simply because each party dreads "being made to feel a fool".
At Brincliffe on this particular day the two sides felt distinctly shy of each other, and it was a real boon to have a pair of "giddy lunatics" to scream at.
But when Cadbury had boxed Frere's ears for giving the dates of the royal Georges correctly, and when Simmons had sharpened his pencil with Vickers's knife without asking leave, the relations between boarders and day-pupils grew easier.
There were few idle wheel-barrows in Elmridge on Saturday afternoon.
If you had passed along the dusty Brickland Road between four and five o'clock, you would have encountered a droll procession. One passer-by stopped to enquire if there was going to be a Battle of Flowers.
Six barrows, laden with flowering plants, each pulled by two boys, and pushed by one, were slowly but steadily travelling towards the town, and at the rear of all was a bath-chair in charge of Hallett and Armitage, wherein sat a thin, delicate-looking man, whose bright eyes and flushed cheeks spoke eloquently of gratitude and pleasure. That bath-chair was Hallett's own idea, and he was very proud of it.