“Fact is,” said Telson, cutting another slice of bread, “Willoughby’s going to the dogs as hard as it can. The seniors in our house are down on you if you do anything. I even got pulled up the other day for having a duel with young Payne with elastics. Awful spree it was! We gave one another six yards, and six shots each. I got on to his face four times, and once on his ear, and he only hit me twice. One of mine was right in his eye, and there was a shindy made, and I got sixty lines from Fairbairn.”
“What a frightful shame!” cried the company. “Yes,” said King; “and it’s just as bad here. The new monitors pull you up for everything. You can’t even chuck boots about in the passage but they are down on you. It was bad enough when Game and that lot were monitors, but ever since they’ve been turned out and the new chaps stuck in it’s worse.”
“And they say it’s just as bad in Welch’s,” said Wakefield. “You know,” said Parson, profoundly, pouring himself out a fresh cup—“you know, if Riddell and Bloomfield ever took it into their heads to pull together, we’d have an awful time of it.”
The bare possibility of such a calamity was enough to sober even the wildest spirit present.
“These seniors are a nuisance,” said Telson, after a pause; “and the worst of it is, we can’t well pay them out.”
“Not in school, or in the Big either,” said King. “We might stick nettles in their beds, you know,” suggested Bosher, “or something of that sort.”
“Rather low, that,” said Parson, “and not much fun.”
“Would leeches be better?” said Bosher, who had lately been giving himself to scientific investigation.
It was considered leeches might not be bad, but there was rather too much uncertainty about their mode of action. That was a sort of thing more in Cusack’s and the Welchers’ line than the present company’s.
“I tell you what,” said Telson, struck with an idea, “we might get at them in Parliament; they’re always so jolly fond of talking about fair play there, and every one being equal. Do you know, I think we might have a little fling there!”