“Bother!—where can he go, then?”
“I vote we stick him in the lumber room under the gymnasium. Nobody ever goes there, and you can get into it any time by the area outside,” said Coxhead.
This was voted an excellent idea. At any rate, if he was discovered or did go off there, the gymnasium was far enough away from Sharpe’s.
So, with much rejoicing, the guy was duly loaded with his explosive internals, and clad in an old derelict overcoat of some late senior. My famous hat adorned his hideous head, and my unappreciated tan boots lent distinction to his somewhat incoherent legs. A train of touch-paper connected with a Roman candle was cunningly devised to protrude in the form of a tongue from his mouth, while ginger-beer bottles filled with gunpowder served as hands. And the whole work of art was one dark evening conveyed by me tenderly and deposited among a wilderness of broken forms, empty hampers, and old bottles in the lumber room under the school gymnasium, “to be called for” in a few days time.
Chapter Sixteen.
Gunpowder Treason.
One result of my boating excursion was that Crofter ceased to frequent his fellow-seniors’ studies. There was no declaration of war, or, indeed, any formal breaking off of relations. But Crofter had sense enough of his own dignity to feel that he had been slighted by Tempest: and Tempest and his friends had no inclination to heal the trouble, or assume an attitude of friendliness they did not feel.
As for me, I found it very hard to steer an even course between the competing parties. Crofter nodded and spoke to me just as usual, and was evidently amused by my panic lest these pacific overtures should be observed or misconstrued by Tempest. Tempest, on the other hand, did not refer again to the subject, but took a little more pains than before to look after me and help me in my work. And an evening or two later, much to my surprise, when I went as usual to “tidy up” in Pridgin’s room while Tempest was there too, my lord and master said abruptly,—