"Possibly. Do you remember what you said last night?"
"For Gideon and the Lord?"
"Yes."
"What about it?"
"We'll let you know in dormy to-night."
"Good. That's ripping."
Proceedings in the lower dormy that evening were unusual. Silence was called and then Neave read from the book of Judges:
"And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon."
Then he continued: "That, my brethren, is the text. And what is its lesson for us here in a community such as ours?" There was a laugh, for he was beautifully constructing a lay sermon on Foskett's lines. "Only to avenge our Gideon very mightily with pitchers. To-morrow night, as you may know, is the last night of term and our brothers next door" (Cries of "Swine" and counter-cries of "Order") "will hold a supper to celebrate their triumph in the playing-field. Now it is a good tradition of the Public Schools and a byword among clean-living Englishmen" (Laughter, for it was sheer Foskett) "that we do pass the last night of term in what my form master would call—thorubos. A Greek word, O Stinkers of the Modern Side. My brothers, it is up to us to infect Randall's with thorubos or disorder. (Cheers and a voice, "What about pitchers?")."
"Ah, my young friend, you hit the nail on its head. As everybody knows, to get on to Randall's gym is as easy as falling downstairs. From there you can get to the fire ladders and up to Randall's dormies. To-morrow night it is proposed to invade the dormies while the whole house gorges below and listens to slush about their pestilential pots. Meanwhile we snitch their water jugs and empty the water on their little beds. Then we bring the jugs back here and wait. The windows on this side of the dormy look out on the zinc roof of Randall's gym: beyond is the dining-room, where the swine will be guzzling. With windows open we can easily hear what's going on. When old Toffee Randall gets up to propose his blighted house" (Neave had in his excitement sunk from the level of the lay sermon) "I move that we chuck all the empty jugs on that zinc roof and shout: 'For Gideon and the Lord.' There ought to be row enough to raise hell. You know what those roofs are ... and there will be forty pitchers. They won't have the least notion what the row is till they get upstairs and see their beds. They'll think it's a private rag of our own, but they'll learn in due time. Now don't anyone say a word. We've got to keep this to our dormy or the pre's are bound to find out."