“The President of the League.”
“And who the dickens is the President of the League when he’s at home?”
“If I knew that, I should tell Mill, and earn his blessing. Not that I want it.”
“Then, I suppose,” snorted Trevor, “you’d suggest that on the strength of this letter I’d better leave Barry out of the team?”
“Satirically in brackets,” commented Clowes.
“It’s no good your jumping on me,” he added. “I’ve done nothing. All I suggest is that you’d better keep more or less of a look-out. If this League’s anything like the old one, you’ll find they’ve all sorts of ways of getting at people they don’t love. I shouldn’t like to come down for a bath some morning, and find you already in possession, tied up like Robinson. When they found Robinson, he was quite blue both as to the face and speech. He didn’t speak very clearly, but what one could catch was well worth hearing. I should advise you to sleep with a loaded revolver under your pillow.”
“The first thing I shall do is find out who wrote this letter.”
“I should,” said Clowes, encouragingly. “Keep moving.”
In Seymour’s house the Mill’s study incident formed the only theme of conversation that morning. Previously the sudden elevation to the first fifteen of Barry, who was popular in the house, at the expense of Rand-Brown, who was unpopular, had given Seymour’s something to talk about. But the ragging of the study put this topic entirely in the shade. The study was still on view in almost its original condition of disorder, and all day comparative strangers flocked to see Mill in his den, in order to inspect things. Mill was a youth with few friends, and it is probable that more of his fellow-Seymourites crossed the threshold of his study on the day after the occurrence than had visited him in the entire course of his school career. Brown would come in to borrow a knife, would sweep the room with one comprehensive glance, and depart, to be followed at brief intervals by Smith, Robinson, and Jones, who came respectively to learn the right time, to borrow a book, and to ask him if he had seen a pencil anywhere. Towards the end of the day, Mill would seem to have wearied somewhat of the proceedings, as was proved when Master Thomas Renford, aged fourteen (who fagged for Milton, the head of the house), burst in on the thin pretence that he had mistaken the study for that of his rightful master, and gave vent to a prolonged whistle of surprise and satisfaction at the sight of the ruins. On that occasion, the incensed owner of the dismantled study, taking a mean advantage of the fact that he was a prefect, and so entitled to wield the rod, produced a handy swagger-stick from an adjacent corner, and, inviting Master Renford to bend over, gave him six of the best to remember him by. Which ceremony being concluded, he kicked him out into the passage, and Renford went down to the junior day-room to tell his friend Harvey about it.
“Gave me six, the cad,” said he, “just because I had a look at his beastly study. Why shouldn’t I look at his study if I like? I’ve a jolly good mind to go up and have another squint.”