"What have I done?" snapped Linklater.
"Well, the monitors are a weak enough gang in all conscience, and it takes them all their time to run things as it is; but when they find you in the middle of every riot and row they're told to suppress, I don't wonder that they all go about looking as if they wanted to blub. Then, one night last week in the dormitory I woke up—about two in the morning, I think—when you were still sitting with some of your pals round the fire. As far as I remember there were you and Hicks and Kelly and little Redgrave—"
"You ought to set up as a private detective," said Linklater, in tones which were meant to be sarcastic, but which only succeeded in sounding rather frightened.
"I happen to know," said Pip, "because you were talking rather loud—at the top of your voices, in fact. And to judge by your conversation you were brewing whiskey-punch."
He stopped, and looked at his friend inquiringly.
"I wonder you didn't rush and tell Chilly," said Linklater witheringly.
"I might have done," agreed Pip, "only it happens to be rather a serious matter for a monitor to be nabbed in a business like that."
"So you thought you'd give me a pi-jaw instead! That was decent of you."
Pip took this affront quite impassively.
"Don't talk rot," he said. "You know perfectly well that this isn't a pi-jaw. They're not in my line. We—we are both people of the same sort of character. The only difference is that at present you happen to be rather off your oats owing to the Head's treatment of you, and that fills you with a desire to raise Cain and drink punch in the dormitory—eh?"