“Of course I have. What do you mean? Why?”
“Well, they didn’t send in the bill right away. But it came all right.”
“Do you think he’s going to do something, then?”
“Rather. You wait.”
Wyatt was right.
Between ten and eleven on Wednesdays and Saturdays old Bates, the school sergeant, used to copy out the names of those who were in extra lesson, and post them outside the school shop. The school inspected the list during the quarter to eleven interval.
To-day, rushing to the shop for its midday bun, the school was aware of a vast sheet of paper where usually there was but a small one. They surged round it. Buns were forgotten. What was it?
Then the meaning of the notice flashed upon them. The headmaster had acted. This bloated document was the extra lesson list, swollen with names as a stream swells with rain. It was a comprehensive document. It left out little.
“The following boys will go in to extra lesson this afternoon and next Wednesday,” it began. And “the following boys” numbered four hundred.
“Bates must have got writer’s cramp,” said Clowes, as he read the huge scroll.