Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/205

 the Major's tactics altogether—if you've reported him fully. I can't help thinking that something or other has escaped your memory. Otherwise it sounds to me rather like a practical joke at your expense. But I should be sorry to suspect a real humorist, like Major Mangles, of that very poor form of humour, unless"—a moment's pause, with twinkling glasses—"unless it were as a sort of payment in kind! That's the only excuse for practical joking, in my opinion; and now I think we can let the whole subject drop. I only hope that the next time some knave, or fool, thinks of breaking into my house, he'll have the pluck to come when I'm at home. Good-night all!"

The house filtered out into the quad, drifted over to the studies, and presently back again to bed, with few comments and less laughter; and that night there was little talk but much constraint in both the top and lower dormitories, ruled respectively by Sprawson and Cave major. Only in the little one, overlooking the street, was the topic in everybody's mind on anybody's lips; and there it was monopolised by Crabtree, who reviewed the entire episode in mordant monologue, broken only by the shaking of the bed beneath his fits of helpless mirth.