It was more than he could bring himself to, to summon the house and announce the news publicly. If Dangle and Brinkman had been with him still, the three of them together might have brazened it out. But his colleagues were sulking in their own quarters, and whatever had to be done must be done singlehanded.
He therefore sat down in no very happy frame of mind and wrote out the following curt notice for the house-boards.—
“Notice.
“The head-master wishes it to be known that the Club money supposed to be missing has been found by the treasurer.
“Geo. Clapperton.”
This ungracious document he copied out three times, and taking advantage of every one being in his study for preparation, affixed with his own hand on the notice boards at the house-door and on each landing.
“There!” said he, with a sneer of disgust, as he returned to his own room, “let them make the most of that.”
An hour later the dormitory bell sounded, and he could hear the scuffling of feet on the lobby outside, and the clamour of voices as boys hustled one another in front of the boards. Evidently the majority regarded the announcement in a jocular manner; and when a distant shout of laughter came up from the passage below, and down from the landing above, it was clear that Forders did not take the matter very much to heart.
“It was ridiculous, when you come to think of it,” soliloquised Clapperton, “that a blundering ass like Fisher major should have brought the School into such a precious mess.”
The noise gradually died away as fellows one by one dropped of to bed.