The boy blinked his pig-like eyes and smiled.
“It would make the fellow who has resigned look so silly, wouldn’t it, if he found we got another one in his place so easily? Smythe was really very impertinent to me.”
The Head pursed his lips.
“I will see this boy,” he announced. “Ask him to come and speak to me to-morrow.”
Roe nodded. At last he leaned forward dutifully. He shifted awkwardly upon his seat.
“I’ve talked it over with Coles ... and we rather hope you might be able to move him to my house.... And if you can do it ... as if it were compulsory ... so that fellows wouldn’t know he’d asked for it ... he thinks that then he and I might get a decent team together in Seymour’s.... He has some very good friends in that house ... and if we could get up a little excitement by challenging Morley’s, who at present have the best Fifteen, to a friendly ... and beat them ... Coles thinks it might turn the tide in our favour.”
The Head smiled shrewdly.
There was silence.
“How did you find out all this?” said he. “How did you meet Coles?”
Roe dipped into the recesses of his memory.