“I don’t mean to knuckle under to him!” said Heathcote, speaking with the mantle of Pledge upon him. “It’s all a dodge to curry favour with Winter.”
The Den was thankful for the suggestion, and revived wonderfully under its influence.
“Catch me doing more for him than for old Ponty!” cried Gosse, who had never done anything for Ponty.
The reference was a popular one, and the Den took it up also. It fell to extolling Ponty to the very heavens, and abasing Mansfield to the opposite extremity, while it held up its hands in horror at the man who could seek to make the good order of Templeton the price of his favour with the Head Master.
But, when the little outburst had subsided, the awkward question still remained—What was to be done?
“Of course nobody will be cad enough to go to the levée after what he said,” said Heathcote, who, warmed by the admiring glances of Coote and the success of his last observation, felt called upon to speak for the assembly in general.
“Rather not! You won’t go, will you, Dick?” said Pauncefote.
“Don’t know,” said that hero, shortly.
The Den was startled. What did Dick mean by “Don’t know”? Was he going to knuckle in after all and join the “saints?”
The uncertainty had a very depressing effect on Heathcote’s enthusiasm, which had calculated all along on the countenance of his leader. Coote, too, cautiously separated himself from Gosse, who was shouting sedition at the top of his voice, and drew off to more neutral territory. Smith and Pauncefote kept up their cheers for Ponty, but gradually dropped the groans for Mansfield, and altogether the howls of the Den toned down to the roar of a sucking dove as it got whispered abroad that Dick Richardson “didn’t know.”