“I’ll get it from him.”
“I say!”
“Well?”
“Don’t tell Smith why you want it, will you? I don’t want anybody to know—if a thing once starts getting about it’s all over the place in no time.”
“All right, I won’t tell him.”
“I say, thanks most awfully! I don’t know what I should have done, I——”
“Oh, chuck it!” said Mike.
[ CHAPTER XLIV
AND FULFILS IT]
Mike started on his ride to Lower Borlock with mixed feelings. It is pleasant to be out on a fine night in summer, but the pleasure is to a certain extent modified when one feels that to be detected will mean expulsion.
Mike did not want to be expelled, for many reasons. Now that he had grown used to the place he was enjoying himself at Sedleigh to a certain extent. He still harboured a feeling of resentment against the school in general and Adair in particular, but it was pleasant in Outwood’s now that he had got to know some of the members of the house, and he liked playing cricket for Lower Borlock; also, he was fairly certain that his father would not let him go to Cambridge if he were expelled from Sedleigh. Mr. Jackson was easy-going with his family, but occasionally his foot came down like a steam-hammer, as witness the Wrykyn school report affair.