"We'll get a house list, Philips, and pin up a proper subscription list on the notice-board. The thing will look more ship-shape then. By the way, what was it the Penfold did? Is he dead?"
"You are a funny fellow, Cotton. Here you are sweating the half-crowns out of the fags and you don't know why you're doing it."
"That is just what I do know," said Jim, smiling serenely.
When the list was pinned up on the board, and opposite each fellow's name appeared the half-crown or crown he had contributed, it made a brave show. Towards the end of the list opposite the name of Todd, A.V.R., there had occurred a dismal blank thoughtfully filled by secretary Cotton with a couple of beautifully even lines ruled in staring red ink. This vivid dash of colour on the white paper gave poor Gus quite an unsolicited advertisement, and since none of the other fellows knew of Gus's circumstances, it practically put him in the pillory as a tight-fisted old screw. This result was exactly what Jim Cotton had in his mind when he fell in with the tablet scheme so enthusiastically. Pretty mean, wasn't it?
When Gus saw the staring red abomination for the first time it made him feel that he would like to pour a little boiling oil over the secretary of the fund, for to a fellow of Gus's temperament the chaffing remarks of his acquaintances and the knowing looks of the juniors made him shiver with righteous anger. He did not like being pilloried. He had desperate thoughts of going and publicly kicking Cotton, but he remembered, fortunately, that Jim would probably only make one mouthful of him. But he paced his room angrily, and except that he really meant to keep himself to his resolution of honourable poverty to the term's end he would have written home. Not to do so cost him a struggle.
There was some one else who eyed this plain manifesto of Gus's position with anger, and that was the Rev. E. Taylor himself. The house-master had not been a house-master for years for nothing, and he guessed pretty shrewdly that some one was writing off a debt with interest against Gus. The house-master made a still shrewder guess as to who this might be, for he had watched the dissolution of the partnership of Cotton and Todd with great interest.
Thus it was that Philips was called into Taylor's room for a quiet little chat on house matters. "Your idea of a memento to Penfold was an excellent one, Philips, and the house seems to have taken it up very heartily."
"Oh yes!" said Philips, naïvely. "The fellows have taken any amount of interest, especially Cotton."
"Cotton's is rather a case of Saul among the prophets, isn't it, Philips?"
"This sort of thing didn't quite seem his line before, sir."