"Oh, dear, yes," said the Dean, looking about him rather piteously. "Now what shall we do about it?"
"Let 'em have it," said Foster, glaring across at Brandon and shutting his mouth like a trap.
This was a direct challenge. Brandon felt his breast charged with the noble anger that always filled it when Foster said anything.
"I must confess," he said, covering, as he always did when he intended something to be final, the Dean with his eye, "that I thought that this was quite definitely settled at last Chapter; I understood--I may of course have been mistaken--that we considered that we could not afford the thing and that the School must wait."
"Well, Archdeacon," said the Dean nervously (he knew of old the danger- signals in Brandon's flashing eyes), "I must confess that I hadn't thought it quite so definite as that. Certainly we discussed the expense of the affair."
"I think the Archdeacon's right," said Bentinck-Major, who wanted to win his way back to favour after the little mistake about the music. "It was settled, I think."
"Nothing of the kind," said Foster fiercely. "We settled nothing."
"How does it read on the minutes?" asked the Dean nervously.
"Postponed until the next meeting," said the Clerk.
"At any rate," said Brandon, feeling that this absurd discussion had gone on quite long enough, "the matter is simple enough. It can be settled immediately. Any one who has gone into the matter at all closely will have discovered first that the School doesn't need a roller--they've enough already--secondly, that the Treasury cannot possibly at the present moment afford to buy a new one."