“Us two,” said Dick, “at least I’ve not seen any more.”
“I believe I’m the only one Pledge has got.”
“Poor beggar! Thanks, Georgie. Get next to me at chapel.”
And the two friends went each his own way.
Pledge seemed, on the whole, agreeably surprised to get as much as a quarter of a can of hot water; and Heathcote, as he polished up the lace boots, felt he had begun well. His new master said little or nothing to him, as he put the study tidy, arranged the books, and got out the cup and saucer and coffee-pot ready for the senior’s breakfast.
“Is there anything else?” he asked as the chapel bell began to toll.
“No, that’s all just now. You can come and clear up after breakfast, and if you’ve got nothing to do after morning school, you can come and take a bat down at the nets, while I bowl.”
At the very least Heathcote had expected to be horrified, when this terrible ogre did speak, by a broadside of bad language; and he felt quite bewildered as he recalled the brief conversation and detected in it not a single word which could offend anybody. On the contrary, everything had been most proper and considerate, and the last invitation coming from a first eleven man to his new fag was quite gratuitously friendly.
“I don’t think he’s so bad,” he remarked to Dick, as they went from chapel to breakfast.
“All I know is,” said Dick, “Cresswell was asking me if it was my chum who had been drawn by Pledge, and when I told him, he told me I might say to you, from him, that you had better be careful not to get too chummy with the ‘spider;’ and the less you hang about his study the better. I don’t think Cresswell would say a thing like that unless he meant it.”