One of his first ordeals was to eat humble-pie over the Rooke's House Rag. With many pen-scratchings and painful recommencements, he prepared and pinned on the notice-board the following announcement:—
THE ROOKE'S HOUSE RAG
Subscribers to the above Magazine are notified that, pending the recovery of the funds lost in the burglary last term, the publication of the Rag has been temporarily suspended. As soon as arrangements can be made its issue will certainly be renewed. In the meantime, any Subscriber who desires the return of his unexpired subscription may receive it on application to the undersigned,
Richard Forge,
Editor.
"The flaw in that literary 'wangle'," thought Dick, as he gazed ruefully at the foolscap sheet, "is the rash promise to refund unexpired subscriptions. If many of the Foxes take advantage of that, I shall be cleaned out of 'tin' for the rest of the term."
He walked off sharply as though from an unclean thing. Had he turned his head, he would have seen that Luke Harwood was the first to read his public confession of failure. And he might have had some of his laudable faith in human nature torn from him could he have observed the self-satisfied smirk on the face of The Foxonian's editor. "I told him so—I knew it," was the verbal key to that smug expression.
Luke Harwood had reason to feel at peace with all the world to-day. After long waiting, things were coming his way at last. This humble suspension of the Rag would not be exactly popular with those who had subscribed to it. They would laugh ironically at the clause "pending the recovery of the funds lost". How very likely that the burglars, conscience-stricken, were saving up stolen money for an opportunity of returning it! Then there was that ugly affair at the public-house—the fight with the ignorant yokel. Very severe things were being said about that in school. If any other Fox had been guilty of a vulgar scrap in such squalid surroundings, would not Forge himself, as captain, have reported the offender to the Head? Then, the School was asking, why did not he report himself?
Oh, truly, reflected Luke, when the annual election of Foxenby's captain took place at Easter, it would not be altogether such a walk-over for Dick Forge as it had been in the two previous years!
During the rest of that miserable week, better news of Roger provided the only relief to the background of dull misery. Roger, his father wrote to say, had made a wonderful recovery, and was already itching to get back to school. Such good tidings served to sustain Dick's pluck as he saw, on almost every side, the growing animosity towards him. It was suspicious, too, that nobody had asked for a return of a subscription to the Rag. Was that also a conspiracy against him—a sort of half-veiled boycott? Even Lyon, that reliable old football warhorse, avoided him whenever possible. Forge was distinctly in the School's black books this term.
Feeling almost an outcast, Dick grew morose and silent, and it was with difficulty that he spoke civilly to Robin Arkness, leader of the Merry Men, when that bland young gentleman accosted him outside his study door.