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Miss Henniker dogged us wherever we went and whatever we did. She sat and glared at us all breakfast time; she sat and glared at us while Mr Ladislaw, or Mr Hashford, the usher, were drilling Latin grammar and arithmetic into us. She sat and glared while we ate our dinner, and she stood and glared when after school we assembled in the boot-room and prepared to escape to the playground.
And Mr Kay's talents as a marksman were in all probability limited to picking off sitting haystacks. The important point was that he had a candle. A faint yellow glow preceded him down the stairs. Playing hide-and-seek with him in the dark, Fenn might have slipped past in safety; but the candle made that impossible. He found the boot-room door and slipped through just as Mr Kay turned the corner.
She went to the boot-room where her pattens had hung ever since her apotheosis; took them down, had their mildewed leathers blacked, and put them on as she had done in old times. Thus mounted, and with cloak and umbrella, she went off to the place of appointment intending, if the lady were not there, to call at the house.
'Then I'll come down to the boot-room at half-past six to-morrow morning and hear what you've got to tell me. 'Lor, miss, it's such a mucky place all among the coal-cellars. 'I don't mind, said Miss Pillby; which was quite true. There was no amount of muckiness Miss Pillby would not have endured in order to injure a person she disliked.
In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn.
In stories of the "Not Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous new boy, who has been found crying in the boot-room over the photograph of his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully's first ball out of the ground for six. With Mike it was different.
It was a horribly dark place, this boot-room, and I could scarcely see who it was who was questioning me. He seemed to be a big boy, a year or two older than myself, with a face which, as far as I could make it out, was not altogether unpleasant. He continued stamping with his refractory boots all the time he was talking to me, letting out occasionally behind, in spite of Miss Henniker.
On the night before an exam, he would retire to some secret, solitary place, such as the boot-room, and commence learning these notes by heart. This, though a formidable task, was not so bad as the other alternative.
"Batchelor," said Miss Henniker, turning to me, "this is the boot-room, where you will have to put on and take off your boots whenever you go out or come in. This boy is going out, and will take you into the playground with him," and away she went, leaving me in the hands of the volatile Flanagan. "Who are you?" he demanded.
You say the last time you went down to throw some crackers over the wall they were all lying in wait for you. Well, let you and me go into the boot-room when Noaks is at work there, and pretend to make a plan as though we were going to do it again to-morrow night; then two of us might go down and see if they're prepared.
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