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The reader may imagine that the walk our two heroes took Citywards that Monday morning was not a very cheerful one. It seemed like walking out of one life into another. Behind, like a dream, were the joyous, merry days spent at Garden Vale and Wilderham, with no care for the future, and no want for the present.
By the way, I wonder if she will want us to leave Wilderham and stay at home now." "I fancy not. Father wanted you to go to Oxford in a couple of years, and she is sure not to change his plan." "Well, I must say," said Reginald, "if I am to settle down as a country gentleman some day, I shall be glad to have gone through college and all that sort of thing before.
Not if I know it or if he does, you and he and your brother and your old fool of a mother " Mr Durfy never got to the end of that sentence. A blow straight from the shoulder of the Wilderham captain sent him sprawling on the pavement before the word was well out of his mouth. It had come now.
Anyhow, I shan't be sorry to show up at Wilderham again, shall you, Bland?" "I hear there's a crowd of new fellows coming, and I hate new fellows." "A fellow must be new some time or other," said Horace. "Harker and I were new boys once, weren't we, Harker?"
Blandford would have preferred to appear ignorant of the identity of the intruder, but Horace left him no room for that amiable fraud. "Hullo, Bland!" said he, just as if he had seen him only yesterday at Wilderham, "what a jolly lot of stairs you keep in this place. I thought I should never smoke you out. How are you, old man?"
He considered the matter most attentively, and kept his eyes fixed on the dim light until London was miles behind him, and the hedges and grey autumn fields on either hand proclaimed the country. Then his mind abandoned its problems, and for another half-hour he tried with all his might to prevent the beat of the engine taking up the rhythm of one of the old Wilderham cricket songs.
The poor mother could not finish her sentence, but bent down and kissed the wet cheek of the boy. "Of course it means," said Horace, after a pause, "we shall have to give up Garden Vale, and leave Wilderham too. And Reg was sure of a scholarship next term. I say, mother, what are we to do?" "We are all strong enough to do something, dear boy," said Mrs Cruden.
He confided to him all about Mr Durfy's tyranny, about his brother's work at the Rocket, and even went so far as to drop out a hint in young Gedge's favour. He told him all about Wilderham and his schoolfellows there, about the books he liked, about the way he spent his evenings, about Dull Street in fact, he felt as if he had known Mr Medlock for years and could talk to him accordingly.
Off you go! and off you go," added he, rounding on Reginald, "and if we don't make it hot for you among us I'm precious mistaken." It was a proud moment certainly for the cock of the fifth at Wilderham to find himself following meekly at the heels of a youngster like Gedge, who had been commissioned to put him to work and look after him.
And at the signal the four chums somehow get together in a corner, and the talk flies off to the old schooldays, and the battles and triumphs of the famous Wilderham Close. Meanwhile Booms and Miss Crisp whisper very confidentially together in another corner. What they talk about no one can guess. It may be collars, or it may be four-roomed cottages, or it may be only the weather.
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