Tipper was not pleased with this little piece of sarcasm. He was a good cricketer and a fine runner, but in school everybody knew him to be as poor a scholar as a fellow could be to be in the sixth at all.
“I dare say even I would be as good as any schoolhouse fellow you could pick out,” said he. “But if you want to know, Bloomfield’s the man.”
“Just what I was saying,” said Ashley. “But Coates says he’s not far enough up in the school.”
“All bosh,” said Tipper. “What difference does it make if a fellow’s first or twentieth in the school, as long as he’s cock of everything outside! I don’t see how the doctor can hesitate a moment between the two.”
This was the conclusion come to at almost all the conclaves which met together during the day to discuss the burning question. It was the conclusion moreover to which Bloomfield himself came as he talked the matter over with a few of his friends after third school.
“You see,” said he, “it’s not that I care about the thing for its own sake. It would be a precious grind, I know, to have to be responsible for everything that goes on, and to have to lick all the kids that want a hiding. But for all that, I’d sooner do it than let the school run down.”
“What I hope,” said some one, “is that even if Paddy doesn’t see it himself, Riddell will, and will have the sense to back out of it. I fancy he wouldn’t be sorry.”
“Not he,” said Bloomfield. “I heard him say once he pitied Wyndham all the bother he had, especially when he was wanting to stew for the exams.”
“Has any one seen Riddell lately?” asked Game. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing for some of us to see him, and put it to him, that the school would go to the dogs to a dead certainty if he was captain.”
“Rather a blunt way of putting it,” said Porter, laughing. “I’d break it to him rather more gently than that.”