"I should like to hear any of you attempting it," authoritatively spoke the senior boy. "I'd split you."
"We don't mean to. Don't be so sharp, Jocelyn."
"There's not the least doubt that he is at the deanery," decided Jocelyn. "I heard something said the other day about the master's having given him general leave to stop there, when asked, without coming home to say it."
"Who told you that, Jocelyn?" questioned Lewis, his ears turning red.
"I heard it, and that's enough. The master can depend upon Arkell, you know."
"Oh, can he though!" cried Lewis, ironically. "I'd lay a crown he's not at the deanery."
"Up to bed, boys," commanded Jocelyn.
The Lewises, senior and junior, and Henry Arkell slept in one room; the rest of the boys were divided into two others. The rooms in the quaint old house were not large. All had separate beds. Arkell's was in the corner behind the door. Marmaduke Lewis, the younger, was in bed immediately, schoolboy fashion, the process occupying about half-a-minute; but the elder did not seem inclined to be so quick to-night. He dawdled about the room, brushed his hair, held his mouth open to admire his teeth in the glass, tried how many different faces he could make, stuck pins in the candle, and, in short, seemed in anything but a bed humour. In the midst of this delay, he heard the voice of Mr. Wilberforce, speaking to one of the servants, as he ascended the stairs.
What Lewis did, in his consternation, he hardly knew. The first thing was to turn the candle upside down in the candlestick, and jam it well in; the next was to fling some of his brother's clothes on to his own chair; and the third to bolt into bed with his own clothes on, and draw the counterpane over his head. Mr. Wilberforce opened the door.
"Are you in bed, boys?"