There was no need of guile. The school was too busy cheering the drawn match. It hung round the lavatories regardless of muddy boots while the team washed. It cheered Crandall minor whenever it caught sight of him, and it cheered more wildly than ever after prayers, because the Old Boys in evening dress, openly twirling their mustaches, attended, and instead of standing with the masters, ranged themselves along the wall immediately before the prefects; and the Head called them over, too—majors, minors, and tertiuses, after their old names.
“Yes, it’s all very fine,” he said to his guests after dinner, “but the boys are getting a little out of hand. There will be trouble and sorrow later, I’m afraid. You’d better turn in early, Crandall. The dormitory will be sitting up for you. I don’t know to what dizzy heights you may climb in your profession, but I do know you’ll never get such absolute adoration as you’re getting now.”
“Confound the adoration. I want to finish my cigar, sir.”
“It’s all pure gold. Go where glory waits, Crandall—minor.”
The setting of that apotheosis was a ten-bed attic dormitory, communicating through doorless openings with three others. The gas flickered over the raw pine washstands. There was an incessant whistling of drafts, and outside the naked windows the sea beat on the Pebbleridge.
“Same old bed—same old mattress, I believe,” said Crandall, yawning. “Same old everything. Oh, but I’m lame! I’d no notion you chaps could play like this.” He caressed a battered shin. “You’ve given us all something to remember you by.”
It needed a few minutes to put them at their ease; and, in some way they could not understand, they were more easy when Crandall turned round and said his prayers—a ceremony he had neglected for some years.
“Oh, I am sorry. I’ve forgotten to put out the gas.”
“Please don’t bother,” said the prefect of the dormitory. “Worthington does that.”
A nightgowned twelve-year-old, who had been waiting to show off, leaped from his bed to the bracket and back again, by way of a washstand.