And the two friends forthwith dived, and turned the plan over beneath the waves.
When, punctually at ten o’clock, the six coaches paraded in the great Quadrangle, no one noticed the absence of Dick and his henchman in the crowd that assembled to watch the departure of the lucky seventy. Nor when coach one had started with the Eleven, and coaches two, three, and four had carried off the rest of the Sixth and Fifth, did any one suspect that coach five had taken up two of its passengers already.
The Upper and Middle Fourth, who boarded this vehicle, had little idea, as they pitched their coats and wraps inside and mounted themselves to the top, that, like the birds who buried the babes in the wood beneath the leaves, they were hiding the light of day from two innocents who lay one under either seat, with their noses to the fresh air and their hearts very decidedly in their mouths.
“Chock full up here,” cried a voice from the top, which Dick, even in his retirement, recognised as belonging to Duffield, the post fag, who, by virtue of his office, was just out of the Den; “you kids will have to go inside.”
“Oh, I say, you might let us up,” replied one of the “kids” in question, in tones of expostulation; “we won’t take up much room. It’s so jolly stuffy inside.”
“So it is,” inwardly ejaculated the two stowaways.
“Just the place for you. You can play oughts-and-crosses and enjoy yourselves. There’s not standing room up here,” cried Duffield.
“Can’t we stand on the step?”
“No; Hooker’s bagged the bottom step, and I’ve bagged the one half up this side as soon as we start.”
The lurkers gasped. They had not reckoned on the steps being occupied and their snug retreat raked by the eyes of the bumptious Hooker.