"I stopped him in the passage this morning," said Brookfield, "and asked him if he would give us something towards our fireworks, as Mr. Gregory used to. He said at once that he didn't intend there should be any fireworks this year, and that he would mention it at the close of morning school."
"I call it a bit too thick," continued the speaker, working himself up into a great state of excitement. "He's been altering rules ever since he came until the place is becoming a regular dame's school. I believe, if he had his way, we should do nothing but work, and go out walking two and two."
"He isn't quite so bad as that," said Collins. "You must admit he's taken more interest in footer than Gregory ever did. He saw that we had a new set of goal-posts, and made better arrangements for the matches."
"Ye-es," admitted Brookfield reluctantly. "But he's made no end of vexatious little rules that we never had before. Why shouldn't we go into town when we like, instead of having to ask permission, and have our names entered in a book? Then what's the object in our being obliged to go into certain shops only? and why should we have half an hour's extra work before breakfast?"
The audience nodded. That having to get up half an hour earlier, especially on cold winter mornings, was certainly a sore point with everybody.
"Now," went on Brookfield, "we aren't to have any more fireworks; and why? Just because he chooses to think we're such babies that we should blow ourselves up with a pinch of powder. I tell you he's come here with the notion that this place is an old dame's school, and it's high time we showed him it isn't."
"How?" inquired Shadbury, moodily grinding his heel into the damp gravel.
"How? Why, all take a stand, and show him we don't mean to put up with any more of this humbug."
"Oh yes," answered Shadbury, with a smile of incredulity. "I fancy I see us doing it, and then getting packed off home next morning."
"Not a bit of it!" returned Brookfield, whose ideas were fast shaping themselves into a definite line of thought. "The only thing is, we must all pull together. Take, for instance, a strike. If one workman came and said he wouldn't work unless he had higher wages, why, he'd simply be told to take his hat and go; but if all the hands in a factory agree to go out at the same time, their employer's bound to listen, for if he sacked the whole lot, why, his business would come to a standstill. It's the same in this case: Chard might expel one fellow, but he couldn't send every chap in the place going, or the school would cease to exist, and he'd get into trouble with the governors."