“I swear I’ll pray for the Head to-night,” said Beetle. “Those last two cuts were just flicks on my collar. There’s a ‘Monte Cristo’ in that lower shelf. I saw it. Bags I, next time we go to Aves!”
“Dearr man!” said McTurk. “No gating. No impots. No beastly questions. All settled. Hullo! what’s King goin’ in to him for—King and Prout?”
Whatever the nature of that interview, it did not improve either King’s or Prout’s ruffled plumes, for, when they came out of the Head’s house, eyes noted that the one was red and blue with emotion as to his nose, and that the other was sweating profusely. That sight compensated them amply for the Imperial Jaw with which they were favored by the two. It seems—and who so astonished as they?—that they had held back material facts; were guilty both of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful.
They were careful, as only boys can be when there is a hurt to be inflicted. They waited through one suffocating week till Prout and King were their royal selves again; waited till there was a house-match—their own house, too—in which Prout was taking part; waited, further, till he had his pads in the pavilion and stood ready to go forth. King was scoring at the window, and the three sat on a bench without.
Said Stalky to Beetle: “I say, Beetle, quis custodet ipsos custodes?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Beetle. “I’ll have nothin’ private with you. Ye can be as private as ye please the other end of the bench; and I wish ye a very good afternoon.”
McTurk yawned.
“Well, ye should ha’ come up to the lodge like Christians instead o’ chasin’ your—a-hem—boys through the length an’ breadth of my covers. I think these house-matches are all rot. Let’s go over to Colonel Dabney’s an’ see if he’s collared any more poachers.”
That afternoon there was joy in Aves.