“Kick open the door, can’t you?” said Tom Senior.
They did kick open the door between them. The lock was a weak one, and soon gave way.
Once inside, the evicted ones indulged their triumph by an uproar of more than usual vehemence, longing that it might tempt into their clutches the daring intruders who had presumed to interfere with their possession. No one came. They had their fling undisturbed. But before they quitted their stronghold one of their number, by diligent searching, had found in the lock of a neighbouring study-door a key which would fit theirs. Repairing, therefore, the catch, damaged by their late forcible entry, they calmly locked the door behind them when they went, and affixed to it, in the identical place where the other notice had hung, “Fifth Form. Private study. Not to be entered without permission.”
Of course, the news of this interesting adventure soon spread, and for a day or two the diligent as well as the idle on either side looked on with increasing interest for the issue of the contest.
For a while the Fifth had the best of it. They defied the enemy to turn them out, and procured and fixed an additional lock on the door. The Sixth threatened to report the matter to the Doctor, and summoned the invaders for the last time to capitulate. The invaders laughed them to scorn, and protested the room belonged to them, and leave it they would not for all the monitors in the world. The monitors retired, and the Fifth enjoyed their triumph.
But next day the Doctor abruptly entered the Fifth Form room, and said, “There is an unoccupied room at the end of the top landing, which some boys in this class have been making use of to the annoyance of other boys. This room, please remember, is not to be entered in future without my permission.”
Checkmate with a vengeance for the Fifth!
This event it was which, trivial in itself, re-kindled once more with redoubled heat the old animosity between the two head Forms at Saint Dominic’s. Although the original quarrel had been confined to only half-a-dozen individuals, it became now a party question of intense interest. The Sixth, who were the triumphant party, could afford to treat the matter lightly and smile over it, a demeanour which irritated the already enraged Fifth past description. The two Forms cut one another dead in the passages. The Fifth would gladly have provoked their rivals to blows, but, like sensible men, the Sixth kept the right side of the law, and refused to have anything to do with the challenges daily hurled at them.
As might be expected, the affair did not long remain a secret from the rest of the school. The Fourth Senior, as a body, stood up for the Sixth, and the Third and Second, on the whole, sided with the Fifth. But when it came to the junior school—the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles—all other partisanship was thrown quite into the shade.
The quarrel was one completely after their own hearts. It had begun in a row, it had gone on in a row, and, if it ever ended, it would end in a row.