Mr Rollitt looked up and down, casting a glance first at his young protectors at the end of the Hall, then scanning the benches before him, then running his eye along the row of prefects, and finally taking the measure of Yorke as he stood and waited for an answer.
Then suddenly the question seemed to come home.
“My son Alf a thief? There’s one of ’em says that, is there? My son Alf a thief? Do to him! Why, I’ll tell you. Just keep him till my son Alf comes back, and make him go and say it to his face. That’s what I should do to him, young gents.”
“That’s what we will do,” said Yorke. “The meeting is over.”
And amid the excitement that ensued, the rush to put down names for the new club, the cheers and hootings and hand-shakings of old enemies, Mr Rollitt was carried off in triumph by his nine hosts to high tea in Wally Wheatfield’s room.
Chapter Twenty Five.
The Watch-Tower.
Wally’s study—he always liked to call it a “study,” but his friends preferred to call it a den—could comfortably accommodate six. The juniors had frequently to own that nine, the normal size of the party, was a jam. When, in addition to that, a big, brawny man was thrown in, it came to be a serious question as to how the four walls would sustain the strain.