Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/147

 "Then why the blazes couldn't you say it yesterday?"

"Because I wasn't going to! He'd no right to set us a holiday task of his own like that; he'd a right to do what he liked to us here, but not in the holidays, and he knew it jolly well. I wanted to see if he'd go to Jerry. I thought he durs'n't, but he did, and you bet the old man sent him away with a flea in his ear! He never got on to me all second school, and he looked another chap when he told me that Mr. Thrale said I was to be kept in till I'd learnt what I'd got to learn. It was the least he could say, if you ask me," remarked Jan, with a complacent grin, "and Haigh didn't seem any too pleased about it. So then I said I thought I could say it without being kept in, just to make him sit up a bit, and by gum it did!"

"But he heard you, Tiger?"

"He couldn't refuse, and I got through without a blooming error."

"But didn't he ask you what it all meant?"

"No fear! He'd too much sense; but he knows right enough. Instead of him sending me up to the old man, it was me that sent him, and got him the wigging he deserved, you bet!"

By this time Chips was in a fever of enthusiastic excitement, and the conclusion of the matter reduced him to a mood too demonstrative for Jan's outward liking, however much it might cheer his secret heart.

"Tiger!" was all Chips could cry, as he wrung the Tiger's paw perforce. "O, Tiger, Tiger, you'll be the hero of the house when this gets known!"

"Don't be daft," replied Jan in his own vernacular—under no restraint in Chips's company. "It's nobody's business but yours and mine. It won't do me any good if it gets all over the place."