It was just what Pledge wanted. How he longed that Mansfield and Cresswell and Freckleton could all have been there to see it.
“Mansfield is hardly likely to trouble his head about every errand even such an important personage as you run,” said he, in reply to one feeble protest from the boy. “Call yourself Swinstead’s fag by all means. You can still fag for me. However, it doesn’t matter to me. I can get on well enough without.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll try,” said Georgie.
That was enough. Pledge felt that too much might overdo it. So with this triumph he dismissed his youthful perturbed protégé for the night, and dreamed sweetly of the wrath of his enemies, when they discovered that after all he (Pledge) was master of the situation in spite of them.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
How the “Martha” comes home to her bereaved friends.
Pledge did well to sleep sweetly and enjoy his triumph while it lasted, for the battle which raged over the soul of George Heathcote was by no means ended yet.
“I say, Georgie,” said Dick, next day, as the “Firm” took a Sunday afternoon stroll along the cliffs. “Where on earth did you get to yesterday? You never turned up at football practice, and skulked all the evening.”