There was no movement on Sinclair's part.
"Laddie!" O'Rane's voice took on the very spirit of Burgess. "I'm an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life. I pray thee come to me lest a worse thing befall thee. For and if thou harden thine heart, peradventure I may come like a thief in the night and evilly entreat thee so that thou shalt wash thy couch with thy tears. Then shall thy life be labour and sorrow."
Unprotesting and under the eyes of Hall, Sinclair rolled off the window-seat and ambled round to O'Rane's corner.
"What's the row?" he demanded.
"I'm going to make a man of Venables—make men of them all," was the reply.
There was a whispered consultation, and I caught "Mud-Crushers"—contemptuous appellation of a despised Cadet Corps. "No, I'm blowed if I do," Sinclair flung up to the figure on the lockers. "I will if you will," whispered O'Rane. A moment's hesitation followed. "It'll be rather a rag," Sinclair admitted.
"We'll start on Palmer," O'Rane pronounced. "He's the biggest. Hither, Palmer."
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Palmer, still with a cross of sticking-plaster on his forehead, look up from his book.
"Go to——," he began valiantly enough, and then anticlimactically as he caught sight of me, "What d'you want?"
"Thee, laddie. Sinks and I are old men, broken with the teares and sorrows of this life. If you don't come, I don't mind telling you you'll get kidney-punch in Dormitory to-night. That's better. I'm joining the Mud-Crushers on Monday. Sinks is joining too. He didn't want to, but I threatened him with kidney-punch."