This was an irreverent question for a Fifth-form boy to ask a prefect, and Felgate naturally rebuked it.
“It’s no business of yours, and you’d better not be impudent, I can tell you. As it happens, I’ve got some work to do, and can’t come. Cut away, you needn’t stay.”
Wake departed cheerfully, and announced that the whole thing was a “put-up job,” as Arthur would have called it, and that Felgate was at the bottom of it. Whereupon Ainger’s face grew dark, and he walked, bat in hand, to the house. The mutineers, with the exception of Felgate, who, with the usual prudence of a professional “patriot,” had retired to his study, were loafing about the common room just where Wake had interviewed them.
“What’s the meaning of all this?” demanded the captain; “what do you mean by not turning up to cricket and sending word you weren’t coming when Wake came for you?”
It was much easier defying Ainger in his absence than in his presence, and now that he stood there and confronted them, the delinquents did not quite feel the hardy men of war they had been five minutes ago. Munger, however, tried to carry the thing off with a bluster.
“We don’t see the fun of being compelled to go every time. We don’t care about cricket; besides—we don’t mean to go. Felgate doesn’t go; why don’t you make him?”
The captain put down his bat.
“Munger, go and put on your flannels at once.”
“What if I don’t?” asked Munger.
Ainger replied by giving him a thrashing there and then, despite his howls and protests that he had just been going, and would never do it again. The captain replied that he didn’t fancy he would do it again in a hurry; and as the remainder of the company expressed positive impatience to go to the cricket-field, he let them of! with a caution, and, after seeing them started, walked moodily up to Felgate’s study.