A grown or sane person might have called the weather vile; but the boys at that School had not yet learned the national interest in climate. It was a little damp, to be sure; but it was always damp in the Easter term, and sea-wet, they held, could not give one a cold under any circumstances. Mackintoshes were things to go to church in, but crippling if one had to run at short notice across heavy country. So they waited serenely in the downpour, clad as their mothers would not have cared to see.
“I say, Corky,” said Beetle, wiping his spectacles for the twentieth time, “if we aren’t going to help De Vitré, what are we here for?”
“We’re goin’ to watch,” was the answer. “Keep your eye on your Uncle and he’ll pull you through.”
“It’s an awful biznai, driving cattle—in open country,” said McTurk, who, as the son of an Irish baronet, knew something of these operations. “They’ll have to run half over the Burrows after ’em. ’S’pose they’re ridin’ Vidley’s ponies?”
“De Vitré’s sure to be. He’s a dab on a horse. Listen! What a filthy row they’re making. They’ll be heard for miles.”
The air filled with whoops and shouts, cries, words of command, the rattle of broken golf-clubs, and a clatter of hooves. Three cows with their calves came up to the Cattle-gate at a milch-canter, followed by four wild-eyed bullocks and two rough-coated ponies. A fat and freckled youth of fifteen trotted behind them, riding bareback and brandishing a hedge-stake. De Vitré, up to a certain point, was an inventive youth, with a passion for horse-exercise that the Northam farmers did not encourage. Farmer Vidley, who could not understand that a grazing pony likes being galloped about, had once called him a thief, and the insult rankled. Hence the raid.
“Come on,” he cried over his shoulder. “Open the gate, Corkran, or they’ll all cut back again. We’ve had no end of bother to get ’em. Oh, won’t old Vidley be wild!”
Three boys on foot ran up, “shooing” the cattle in excited and amateur fashion, till they headed them into the narrow, high-banked Devonshire lane that ran uphill.
“Come on, Corkran. It’s no end of a lark,” pleaded De Vitré; but Corkran shook his head. The affair had been presented to him after dinner that day as a completed scheme, in which he might, by favour, play a minor part. And Arthur Lionel Corkran, No. 104, did not care for lieutenancies.
“You’ll only be collared,” he cried, as he shut the gate. “Parsons and Orrin are no good in a row. You’ll be collared sure as a gun, De Vitré.”