To prefer a complaint to the dean of their head-master was a daring measure; such as the school, with all its hardihood, had never yet attempted. It might recoil upon themselves; might produce no good to the question at issue, and only end in making the master their enemy. On the other hand, the boys were resolved not to submit tamely to a piece of favouritism so unjust, without doing something. In the midst of this perplexity, one of them suddenly mooted the suggestion that a written memorial should be sent to the head-master from the school collectively, respectfully requesting him to allow the choice of senior to be made in the legitimate order of things, by merit or priority, but not by favour.
Lame as the suggestion was, the majority were for its adoption simply because no other plan could be hit upon. Some were against it. Hot arguments prevailed on both sides, and a few personal compliments rather tending to break the peace, had been exchanged. The senior boy held himself aloof from acting personally: it was his place they were fighting for. Tom Channing and Huntley were red-hot against what they called the “sneaking,” meaning the underhand work. Gerald Yorke was equally for non-interference, either to the master or the dean. Yorke protested it was not in the least true that Lady Augusta had been promised anything of the sort. In point of fact, there was no proof that she had been, excepting her own assertion, made in the hearing of Jenkins. Gerald gravely declared that Jenkins had gone to sleep and dreamt it.
Affairs had been going on in a cross-grained sort of manner all day. The school, taking it as a whole, had been inattentive; Mr. Pye had been severe; the second master had caned a whole desk, and threatened another, and double lessons had been set the upper boys for the following morning. Altogether, when the gentlemen were released at five o’clock, they were not in the sweetest of tempers, and entered upon a wordy war in the cloisters.
“What possessed you to take and tear up that paper you were surreptitiously scribbling at, when Pye ordered you to go up and hand it in?” demanded Gaunt, of George Brittle. “It was that which put him out with us all. Was it a love-letter?”
“Who was to think he’d go and ask for it?” returned Brittle, an indifferent sort of gentleman, who liked to take things easily. “Guess what it was.”
“Don’t talk to me about guessing!” imperiously spoke Gaunt. “I ask you what it was?”
“Nothing less than the memorial to himself,” laughed Brittle. “Some of us made a rough shell of it, and I thought I’d set on and copy it fair. When old Pye’s voice came thundering, ‘What’s that you are so stealthily busy over, Mr. Brittle?—hand it in,’ of course I could only tear it into minute pieces, and pretend to be deaf.”
“You had best not try it on again,” said Gaunt. “Nothing puts out Pye like disobeying him to his face.”
“Oh, doesn’t it, though!” returned Brittle. “Cribs put him out the worst. He thought that was a crib, or he’d not have been so eager for it.”
“What sort of a shell is it?” asked Harry Huntley. “Who drew it out?”