It was all waste energy, for Mr Rebble threw open the door of our dormitory again, drew back for us to enter, and said, with a nasty malicious laugh, as if he enjoyed punishing us,—
“Not a morsel of anything till that bread is eaten.”
Then the door was closed, sharply locked, the key withdrawn, and his steps died away.
“What a take in!” grumbled Mercer, as we looked round the neat, clean bedroom, and realised that we had only been locked up in the other place while the maids came to make the beds. “I was all screwed up tight, and would have taken my caning without so much as a squeak. Couldn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I felt ready to go on with it, and now I suppose we shall have to wait.”
To our great disgust, we did have to wait hour after hour. We heard the fellows go out from school, and their voices came ringing through the clear summer air, and then we heard them come in to dinner; but we were not called down, nothing was sent up to us, and, though we kept watch at the window looking down into the shrubbery, there was no sign of the cook, and the kite string remained unused.
“But she’s sure to come some time,” said Mercer. “She won’t let old Reb starve us. Hi! look there. Old Lomax. There he goes.”
Sure enough, the old sergeant marched down the road, and we watched till he was out of sight, but he did not see us.
“I wonder what he thought when we did not go for our lesson this morning,” I said.
“Oh, he had heard of it, safe,” cried Mercer. “Hark, there they go out from dinner. I say, I’m getting tired of this. They must have us down soon.”