“Well, you know what I mean,” replied Game, who was of the downright order.
“You see,” said Bloomfield, who, despite his protestations, was evidently not displeased at the notion of his possible honours, “I don’t profess to be much of a swell in school; but—I don’t know—I fancy I could keep order rather better than he could. The fellows know me.”
“They ought to, if they don’t,” said Wibberly, who was a toady.
“Fancy Riddell having to lick a junior,” said Game. “Why he’d faint at the very idea.”
“Probably take him off to his study and have a prayer-meeting with Fairbairn and a few more of that lot upon the top of him,” said Gilks, a schoolhouse monitor, and not a nice-looking fellow.
“I guess I’d sooner get a hiding from old Bloomfield than that,” laughed Wibberly.
“I hope,” said Game, “snivelling’s not going to be the order of the day. I can’t stand it.”
“I don’t think you’ve any right to call Riddell a sniveller,” said Porter. “He may be a muff at sports, but I don’t fancy he’s a sneak. And I don’t see that it’s against him, either, if he does go in for being what he professes to be.”
“Hear! hear!—quite a sermon from Porter,” cried Wibberly.
“Porter’s right,” said Bloomfield. “No one says it was against him. All I say is that I don’t expect the fellows will mind him as much as they would a fellow who—well, who’s better known, you know.”