Jane smiled; he talked so fast. "What is that you are running on about?"
"Goodness, mamma, don't you understand? All the six weeks of Lent, and on the 30th of January, the cathedral is hung with black, and the choristers have to wear black cloth surplices. They don't find the black ones: the college does that."
Frank's success in gaining the place did not give universal pleasure to the college school. Since the day of the disturbance in the spring, in which William was mixed up, the two young Halliburtons had been at a discount with the desk at which Cyril Dare sat; and this desk pretty well ruled the school.
"It's coming to a fine pass!" exclaimed Cyril Dare, when the result of the trial was carried into the school. "Here's the town clerk's own son passed over as nobody, and that snob of a Halliburton put in! Somebody ought to have told the dean what snobs they are."
"What would the dean have cared?" grumbled another, whose young brother had been amongst the rejected ones. "To get good voices in the choir is all he cares for in the matter."
"I say, where do they live—that set?"
"In a house of Ashley's, in the London Road," answered Cyril Dare. "They couldn't pay the rent, and my father put a bum in."
"Bosh, Dare!"
"It's true," said Cyril Dare. "My father manages Ashley's rents, you know. They'd have had every stick and stone sold, only Ashley—he is a regular soft over some things—took and gave them time. Oh, they are a horrid lot! They don't keep a servant!"
The blank astonishment this last item of intelligence caused at the desk, can't be described. Again Cyril's word was disputed.