One night he lay awake, thinking. The school clock had just chimed midnight, and the dormitory was given up to a well-modulated concerto for seventeen nasal organs. Pip found himself wondering if Linklater was asleep. Happy thought! he would go and see.
The night was cold, and the moon shone brightly through the uncurtained oriel windows upon Pip's bare feet as they paddled along the boarded floor. Pip's cubicle was next to the dormitory door, while Linklater's was at the extreme end, the two monitors thus dividing the dormitory between them.
Pip had something to say to Linklater.
Presently he arrived at his friend's cubicle. It possessed no door, and the moonlight illuminated the interior quite plainly, in spite of the fact that the lower half of the window was obscured by a human form—the form, in fact, of the owner of the cubicle. He was leaning far out, and was apparently endeavouring to communicate with some one in the garden below.
No; he was hauling something up! Pip could see the regular motion of his elbow as the line came in hand over hand. What had this midnight fisherman hooked? And who had put the fish on the hook for him? And what on earth—?
Suddenly the motion of Linklater's elbow ceased. Still intent on his employment, he stepped back a pace and scientifically "landed" his quarry. Simultaneously Pip realised that this performance was not intended for the public eye. He must either take official notice of it or go back to bed.
He went back to bed.
"I wonder," he said to himself, as he settled down under the clothes again, "if they ever wrap up anything but bottles in those straw things? He can't have taken to drink! Atkins, of course, daren't supply him with any more, so he must be—But surely he doesn't find it as necessary as all that! Perhaps it's only cussedness. Let's hope so! Poor old Link! In the morning I'll—"
Here Pip joined the well-modulated concerto.