The quotation was, however, now greeted as vociferously as if it had been strictly original, and shouts of “So you are!”
“Bravo, Paul!” for a while drowned the orator’s voice. When silence was restored his eloquence took a new and unexpected departure. “Jemmy Welch, I’ll punch your head when we get outside, see if I don’t!” Jemmy Welch was a Guinea-pig who had just made a particularly good shot at the speaker’s nose with a piece of plum-cake. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall not detain you with a speech (loud cheers from all, and ‘Jolly good job!’ from Bramble). I shall go on speaking just as long as I choose, Bramble, so now! (Cheers.) I’ve as much right to speak as you have. (Applause.) You’re only a stuck-up duffer. (Terrific cheers, and a fight down at the end of the table.) I beg to drink the health of the Guinea-pigs. (Loud Guinea-pig cheers.) We licked the old Tadpoles in the match. (‘No you didn’t!’ ‘That’s a cram!’ and groans from the Tadpoles.) I say we did! Your umpire was a cheat—they always are! We beat you hollow, didn’t we, Stee Greenfield?”
“Yes, rather!” shouted Stephen, snatching a piece of cake away from a Tadpole and shying it to a Guinea-pig.
“That’s eight matches we’ve won,” proceeded Paul; “and—all right, Spicer! I saw you do it this time! See if I don’t pay you for it!” whereat the speaker hurriedly quitted his seat and, amid howls and yells, proceeded to “pay out” Spicer.
Meanwhile Stephen heard his name suddenly called upon for a song, an invitation he promptly obeyed. But as the clamour was at the time deafening, and the attention of the audience was wholly monopolised by the commercial transactions taking place between Paul and Spicer, the effect of the performance was somewhat lost. Oliver certainly did see his young brother mount up on the table, turn very red in the face, open his mouth and shut it, smile in one part, look sorrowful in another, and wave his hand above his head in another. But that was the only intimation he had of a musical performance proceeding. Words and tune were utterly inaudible by any one except the singer himself—even if he heard them.
This was getting monotonous, and the two visitors were thinking of withdrawing, when the door suddenly opened, and a dead silence prevailed. The new-comer was the dirtiest and most ferocious-looking of all the boys in the lower school, who rushed into the room breathless, and in what would have been a white heat had his face been clean enough to show it. “What do you think?” he gasped, catching hold of the back of a chair for support; “Tony Pembury’s kept me all this while brushing his clothes! I told him it was cricket feast, but he didn’t care! What do you think of that? Of course, you’ve finished all the grub; I knew you would!”
This last plaintive wail of disappointment was drowned in the clamour of execration which greeted the boy’s announcement. Lesser feuds were instantly forgotten in presence of this great insult. The most sacred traditions of Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles were being trampled upon by the tyrants of the upper school! Not even on cricket feast night was a fag to be let off fagging!
It was enough! The last straw breaks the camel’s back, and the young Dominicans had now reached the point of desperation.
It was long before silence enough could be restored, and then the redoubtable Spicer yelled out, “Let’s strike!”
The cry was taken up with yells of enthusiasm—“Strike! No more fagging!”