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Being thus so much thrown together, both in and out of school, it was only natural that the friendship which they had formed in the holidays should be still more firmly established. Only one thing acted as a drag upon it, and that was the fact of Jack's still finding a strong counter-attraction in the society of Garston, Rosher, and Teal.
"You are a rum fellow, Jack; you're always wanting to fight somebody. When you get two fellows against you like Garston and Rosher, you go at it like a tiger; and then another time, just because you get hold of a chap who can't knock you down, you back out and make peace." "Well," answered the other, "there's no sport in licking a chap like that. I'll tell you what, I'm frightfully hungry."
Rosher leaned forward, and giving his friend a nudge, uttered the one word, "Bolt!" Jack's blood was up. He wrenched himself free of the man's grasp, and plunged into the little crowd of riff-raff, striking heavy blows to right and left. Rosher did the same; and the enemy, who were nothing but a pack of barking curs, went down like ninepins, falling over one another in their efforts to escape.
"Can't say," returned the other. "I don't want to see him; but I suppose we must go. Let's hunt up Rosher." A few minutes before five, the three boys entered the booking-office at the railway station. "I wonder which platform it is!" said Jack. "Hallo! there's Raymond." The gentleman in question came forward, flourishing his silver-mounted cane. "Well, my dear nephews," he cried, laughing.
It was something, at such an hour, to have the sympathy and friendship even of a scapegrace like Rosher. The prisoner said "it didn't matter," and so they parted. For some time Jack wandered round the little room, swinging the blind cords, and trifling with the broken-down metronome on the mantelpiece.
Garston threw such an amount of eloquence into the reading of the sentence, "My cousin has lost the hat of the gardener," that every one sighed to think that a relative of one of their classmates should have brought such sorrow on the head of the honest son of toil; and when Teal announced joyfully that "His uncle had found the hat of the gardener," Rosher was obliged to slap the speaker on the back, and say, "Bravo!"
"But how about prizes?" persisted Teal, who was of rather a mercenary disposition. "There needn't be any proper prizes," answered Rosher; "we can give the winners anything." "Give 'em lines," suggested Garston. "No; shut up, Garston. Everybody must give something. I'll offer a brass match-box, shaped like a pig." "No, you won't," interrupted Teal.
He strolled past it in the dusk, and paused to look in through the gates: the boys had not yet returned, and the quadrangle was dark and deserted. He thought of the night when he and Rosher had climbed in by way of the headmaster's garden, and forced an entry into the house through the bathroom window.
Hardly had the door closed behind them, when Rosher and Teal charged along the passage and seized hold of Valentine and Hollis. The other boys crowded round in a circle. "Look here, my good chap," said Teal, "in future you'll have to drop that; d'you hear?" "Drop what?" "Why, doing more work than what's set." "But why shouldn't I?" said Hollis. "There's no harm in it; he didn't give us any marks."
He would sit by the hour and talk with Bimley, the cottager; with Rosher, the hotel-keeper, who when young had travelled far; with a sailorman, home for a holiday, who said he could spin a tidy yarn; and with Pogan, the groom, who had at last won Saracen's heart.
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