And it presently appeared that out of the form of twenty-four boys there were as many as six who lived in Manchester and were not going away. “It will be hell,” prophesied one of the unfortunates.
“It needn’t,” said Sam Branstone, turning from the window to the mournful group.
“You’re used to it. We’re not,” said someone cruelly, and Lance smacked his head. Allusions to anybody’s poverty were bad form.
“What’s the prescription?” asked Dubby, and Sam was silent for a minute. “Watch him. Something’s dawning,” chaffed Dubby. It wasn’t dawning, it had dawned; but at first it looked like a risk, and then much less like one, and Sam smiled beautifully as he realized that he, at least, had all to gain and nothing to lose. He drew the luckless five mysteriously aloof.
“The prescription,” he said, “is to have a holiday in Manchester, in a holiday house.” He let that soak for a minute, and then, “Our own house,” he added. “There are six of us. We join together and we take a house. A small house, and I daresay some of you won’t like the neighbours, but as the neighbours won’t like us, that’s as broad as it’s long. Swagger neighbours wouldn’t stand us anyhow, and the smaller the house the smaller the rent. Something like four-and-six a week is my idea. That’s nine-pence a week for each of us, and we’ve a house of our own for that to do what we like in.”
“By Jove!” said someone admiringly.
“What shall we call it?” said another, a trifle doubtfully.
“Call it?” said Lance. “That’s obvious. The Hell-fire Club.”
And, of course, if any doubt remained, that settled it. Who would regret the seaside if he could be a member of the Hell-fire Club? Lance was commissioned to negotiate with his father, the estate agent, but it was Sam who really chose their house. It was a house which in Sam’s opinion excellently suited the requirements of a young married couple of the window-cleaning class. Mr. Travers told Lance that he would stop the value of any damage out of his pocket-money, and on those conditions let them the house. But he need not have made that cautionary threat; Sam saw that there was no damage.
The Hell fire Club assembled for its initiatory debauch on the first day of the holidays, and by eleven a.m. three inexpert cigarette-smokers had had occasion to use the slopstone as a vomitorium. It left them feeling chilly, and Dubby suggested that a house-warming without a fire was a solecism, even on a hot day, so a lavish plutocrat brought in two sacks of coal and a supply of chips. Firelighting is a sport out of which a certain excitement can be derived, but only for a short time, and the same evanescent quality attaches to the pleasure of sitting on bare boards.