“That’s right, Roland Yorke!” cried he. “I’d scorn the action of bringing up a fellow’s relations against him. Whether Arthur Channing took the note, or whether he didn’t, what has that to do with Tom?—or with us? They are saying, some of them, that Tom Channing shan’t sign a petition to the master about the seniorship!”
“What petition?” uttered Roland, who had not calmed down a whit.
“Why! about Pye giving it to Gerald Yorke, over the others’ heads,” returned Bywater. “You know Gerald’s crowing over it, like anything, but I say it’s a shame. I heard him and Griffin say this morning that there was only Huntley to get over, now Tom Channing was put out of it through the bother about Arthur.”
“What’s the dean about, that he does not give Pye a word of a sort?” asked Roland.
“The dean! If we could only get to tell the dean, it might be all right. But none of us dare do it.”
“Thank you for your defence of Arthur,” said Tom Channing to Roland Yorke, as the latter was striding away.
Roland looked back. “I am ashamed for all the lot of you! You might know that Arthur Channing needs no defence. He should not be aspersed in my school, Gaunt, if I were senior.”
What with one thing and another, Roland’s temper had not been so aroused for many a day. Gaunt ran after him, but Roland would not turn his head, or speak.
“Your brothers are excited against Tom Channing, and that makes them hard upon him, with regard to this accusation of Arthur,” observed Gaunt. “Tom has gone on above a bit, about Gerald’s getting his seniorship over him and Huntley. Tom Channing can go on at a splitting rate when he likes, and he has not spared his words. Gerald, being the party interested, does not like it. That’s what they were having a row over, when you came up.”
“Gerald has no more right to be put over Tom Channing’s head, than you have to be put over Pye’s,” said Roland, angrily.