“You’ll get jolly well turned out when Ringwood comes,” said Percy. “Come on, you chaps,” added he to his own friends. “What’s the use of sitting on a bench like schoolboys an hour before the time? Let’s have a trot.”
“Mind you don’t dirty your white bags,” cried D’Arcy.
“No, we might be mistaken for Classic kids if we did,” shouted Cottle. “Ha, ha!”
Whereupon, and not before time, the friends parted for a while.
When Percy and Co. returned, they found the pavilion was filling up, and, greatly to their delight, the front row was empty. The enemy had been cleared out; and serve them right.
“Come on, you chaps,” said Lickford; “don’t let’s get stuck in there. Come over to the oak tree, and get up there. It’s the best view in the field.”
Alas! when they got to the oak tree, four friendly voices hailed them from among the leaves.
“How are you, Modern kids? There’s a ripping view up here. Have an acorn? Mind your eye. Sorry we’re full up. Plenty of room up the poplar tree.”
The Moderns scorned to reply, and walked back sulkily to the pavilion, not without parting greetings from their friends up the oak tree, and squatted themselves on the steps.
The place was filling up now. Mrs Stratton was there with some visitors. All the little Wakefields were there, of course—“minor, minimus, and minimissima,” as they were called—uttering war-whoops in honour of their house. And there was a knot of Rendlesham fellows talking among themselves and generally taking stock of the Fellsgarth form. Mr Stratton, in civilian dress, as became the umpire, was the first representative of the School to show up on the grass. A distant cheer from the top of the oak tree hailed his arrival, and louder cheers still from the steps of the pavilion indicated that the popular master was not the private property of any faction in Fellsgarth.