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If you don't do it in 4.48 you deserve to be sent home to the nursery. But do you see Branscombe gave up before the end? That's odd. I rather thought he was the better man of the two." "Branscombe seems to be down on his luck altogether this term," said Ainger. "I fancy he hasn't a very sweet time at Bickers's." "But he ought to have won the mile, for all that.
Rumour had already been active as to the feud between Mr Bickers and the Master of the Shell, and not a few of the better-informed boys had heard that it was connected with the outrage last term, and that Mr Bickers's intention was to bring that crime home, in some manner best known to himself, to Mr Railsford. The idea was generally pooh-poohed as a piece of vindictive folly.
It sounded more like a jest than sober earnest. "I have my master's exeat" he said; "if he or the doctor cancels it I shall go in at once, sir." It was Mr Bickers's turn to stare now. He had overdone it for once in a way.
"Such a flare-up!" wrote the youth. "Moss has got kicked out! He's jacked it up, and is going at Christmas. Jolly good job! He shouldn't have stopped the roast potatoes in the dormitories. Bickers's fellows have them; they can do what they like! Dig and I did the two mile spin in 11.19, but there was too much slush to put it on.
Here, in the hand of the chief offender himself, was a pictorial record of that grievous outrage, and here, denounced, by himself in letters of Greek, were the names for which all the school had suffered. The Master of the Shell seemed to be in a dream. Branscombe and Clipstone, the head prefects of Bickers's own house I and Munger, the ill-conditioned toady of Railsford's!
"There's Mrs 'Astings, doing the floors in Bickers's." Mrs Hastings was duly summoned, and arrived with her broom and kneeling-pad. "My good woman, can you tell me the fare from Blankington here?" The lady looked perplexed, then embarrassed, then angry. "And you fetched me over from Bickers's me, with my lame foot, over the cobbles to ask me that! You oughter be ashamed of yerself, young man.
"Now," said Mr Bickers, when the door was again closed, "Arthur Herapath, come here." Mr Bickers's knowledge of the names of the boys in other houses was quite phenomenal. Arthur, with hanging head and thumping heart, slunk forward.
"For all that, I should like to know the name of the person referred to." "You surely do not mean, Bickers, that you attach any importance to a ridiculous joke like that?" "I attach just the importance it deserves, Railsford." "Then I would put it in the fire, Bickers." Mr Bickers's face darkened.
However, a little mutual mistrust sometimes paves the way to a good deal of mutual confidence; and after a few days the two men had risen considerably in one another's esteem. When Railsford, on the evening in question, crushed Mr Bickers's note up in his hand, with an angry exclamation, monsieur said "Voila, mon cher Railsford, you do not get always billets-doux?"
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