“Please let me go,” he said. “I just came to say there was too much noise, and—”
But the laughter of the Limpets drowned the rest, in the midst of which he retired miserably to the door and escaped.
In the passage outside he met Bloomfield, with Wibberly and Game, hurrying to the scene of the riot. They scarcely deigned to recognise him with anything more than a half-curious, half-contemptuous glance.
“Some one must stop this row!” said Bloomfield to his companions as they passed. “The doctor will be down on us.”
“You stop it, Bloomfield!” said Wibberly; “they’ll shut up for you.”
This was all the unfortunate Riddell heard, except that in a few moments the uproar from the Fourth Form room suddenly ceased, and was not renewed.
“What did Bloomfield do this morning when he came into your room?” asked Riddell that evening of Wyndham junior, a Limpet in whom, for his brother’s sake, the new captain felt a special interest, and whom he invited as often as he liked to come and prepare his lessons with him.
“Oh!” said Wyndham, who had been one of the combatants, “he gave Watkins and Cattermole a hiding, and swore he’d allow no removes from the Limpets’ eleven to the school second this term if there was any more row.”
This reply by no means added to Riddell’s comfort.
“Gave Cattermole and Watkins a hiding.” Fancy his attempting to give Cattermole and Watkins a hiding! And not only that, he had held out some awful threat about Limpets’ cricket, which appeared to have a magical effect.