“I am starting again next term,” said Toby. “See you then.”
With morning sensation came like a dust-storm to sweep Harley in its whirl and leave her spinning. The whole of Roe’s own house, of course, knew overnight. Those who had been asleep were violently awakened to be told. And in the morning the members of Seymour’s spread out fanwise and ran through the other houses before their breakfast, carrying the news.
At morning prayers there was some kind of hope that the Head would make an announcement revoking his selection of a football captain, and perhaps even acknowledging the claims of Rouse, but instead he came in without an indication of any kind that anything was untoward and faced them. His eyes roamed round the sea of their upturned faces. He noticed Rouse in the forefront, but Rouse did not look his way. Next his eyes turned upon the rebels of the Sixth lined up beneath his dais, each in a most devout and learned attitude, and finally he turned to Pointon and jerked his head at him. So Pointon’s voice broke the silence at last as he began to read.
When, later, the moment came for the Head to walk down the aisle between them, his gown majestically swinging, and to pass through the open doors before their shuffling dismissal to their classes could begin, he walked with a quick and irritable step, and it was not until he had reached the quiet of his own room that he remembered one saving thought in his bitter sorrow. They did not yet know that he himself would, at the end of term, leave them in triumphant possession of their own unwritten laws.
One master and one boy were, as we know, in the secret, but the boy had honourably promised not to speak of it to anyone in the school, not even to Rouse or Terence or Henry Hope.
“It is not your secret,” Toby had said. “You have stumbled upon it, and so it is not yours to tell.”
In Seymour’s they had looked at Bobbie curiously in the morning, and a great many boys of his own age had gathered about him to satisfy their curiosity by asking questions. But he had smiled at them and shaken his head.
“I went out for someone and I was late back,” was all he would say; “but I got in all right.”
For the rest, he let their imagination carry them where it would. Rouse came upon him and he too would have begun to question, but Bobbie gave him a note from Toby and this appeared to afford him wholesome satisfaction.