Another inch did make a job of it, for just as the bottom shelf closed in the top gave a spring forward, pulling the nail along with it, and burying the two mechanics under a cascade of books, plaster, and shattered timber. Arthur and Dig sat on the floor and surveyed the ruin stolidly, while Smiley, evidently under the delusion that the whole entertainment had been got up for his amusement, barked vociferously, and, seizing a Student’s Gibbon in his teeth, worried it, in the lightness of his heart, like a rat. At this juncture the door opened, and Railsford, with alarm in his face, entered.
“Whatever is the matter?” he exclaimed.
It was an excellent cue for the two boys, who forthwith began to rub their arms and shoulders, and make a demonstration of quiet suffering.
“This horrid bookcase won’t stick up!” said Arthur. “We were trying to put the things tidy, and it came down.”
“It’s a pretty good weight on a fellow’s arm!” said the baronet, rubbing his limb, which had really been grazed in the downfall.
“It is a very great noise on the top of my head,” said the master. “I dare say it was an accident, but you two will have to be a great deal quieter up here, or I shall have to interfere.”
“We really couldn’t help it, Mark—I mean Rails—I mean Mr Railsford,” said Arthur, in an injured tone. “There’s Dig will get into no end of a row, as it is. He was writing out that imposition for you, and now he’s hurt his arm through helping me—brick that he is! I suppose you won’t mind if I finish the lines for him?”
Arthur was staking high, and would have been sadly disconcerted had his kinsman taken him at his word.
“Is your arm really hurt, Oakshott?” inquired the master.
“Oh no; not much,” said Digby, wincing dramatically, and putting on an air of determined defiance to an inward agony. “I dare say I can manage, after a rest. We had taken some of the books out, so I only had the bookcase and three shelf-loads of books on the top of me! That wasn’t so much!”