"Remain where you are, Hardcast," foamed Prattleton. "I dare you to stir."
Hardcast, a little chap of ten, was already off, but he turned round at the word. "I am not under your orders, Mr. Prattleton, when the senior chorister's present."
A few minutes, and then the Reverend Mr. Wilberforce, in his surplice and hood, was seen advancing. Hardcast had fetched him out of the chanting-desk.
"What's all this? what hubbub are you boys making? I'll flog you all to-morrow. Arkell, Prattleton, what's the matter?"
"I thought it better to send for you, sir, than to have a disturbance here," said Arkell.
"A disturbance here! You had better not attempt it."
"Don't the king's scholars take precedence of the choristers, sir?" demanded Prattleton.
"No, they don't," returned the master. "If you have not been years enough in the college to know the rules, Mr. Prattleton, you had better return to the bottom of school, and learn them. Arkell, in this place, you have the command. King's scholars move down, and be quick over it: and I'll flog you all round," concluded Mr. Wilberforce, "if you strike up a dispute in college again."
The master turned tail, and strode back as fast as his short legs would carry him: for the dean and chapter, marshalled by a verger and the bedesmen, were crossing the cathedral; and a flourish of trumpets, outside, told of the approach of the judges. The Reverend Mr. Wilberforce was going to take the chanting for an old minor canon whose voice was cracked, and he would hardly recover breath to begin.
The choristers all grinned at the master's decision, save Arkell and Aultane, junior: the latter, though second chorister, took part with Prattleton, because he hated Arkell; and as the judges passed in their flowing scarlet robes with the trains held up behind, and their imposing wigs, so terrible to look at, the bows of the choristers were much more gracious than those of the king's scholars. The additional mob, teeming in after the judges' procession, was unlimited; and a rare field had the boys and their pins that day.