And Sprawson shook every hand within reach, and played several kinds of fool with his handkerchief until the landau was out of sight. Then indeed the quad became a Babel, from which a trained ear might have extracted a consensus of unshaken confidence in Sprawson and Cave _major_. The house, as a whole entirely trusted them to hoodwink Major Mangles as they had already hoodwinked the Spook and even old Heriot himself. It was the last feat which made all things possible to these arch impostors. And only a severe old sage like Crabtree would have entertained any doubt upon the point, which his trenchant tongue argued against all and sundry till the quad was empty for the afternoon. Jan happened to be playing in the first game on the Middle, while Chips had a humble place in the second Lower; at the joint call-over for the two grounds (4.30) it was whispered that neither Cave nor Sprawson had returned to the Sixth Form match on the Upper. The whisper had swelled into a Bible Oath, and the indisputable fact into a farrago of pure fiction, before the return of the missing pair made it unsafe even to breathe their names in Heriot’s quad. They were not quite the same young men who had made a state departure in the Major’s landau. Their flannels were powdered with the drab dust of the wayside, and they limped a little in the fives-shoes for which they had changed their spikes before coming down from the Upper. Cave moreover looked a diabolically dangerous customer, to whom Loder himself shrank from addressing a remark, after crossing the quad with that obvious intention. Sprawson as usual preserved a genial countenance; but the unlucky Bingley, betrayed into a tactless question by a mysterious wink, had his arm nearly twisted out of its socket as he deserved. “Now I feel better!” says Sprawson, with ferocious glee. “I’m much obliged to you, Toby, and I hope you’ll regain the use of your arm in time.” But the house was no wiser until after prayers. At tea Cave _major_ never spoke, and Sprawson only grinned into his plate. But Miss Heriot had scarcely withdrawn after prayers, when Heriot, taking up his nightly position before the fireplace, asked the two swells how they got on. And the entire house stayed in the hall to hear. “Major Mangles,” returned Cave _major_, with cutting deliberation, “may be Chief Constable of the county, and anything he likes by birth, but he’s no gentleman for all that.” “Really, Cave? That’s a serious indictment. Why, what has he done?” “You’d better ask Sprawson,” says Charles Cave, with a haughty jerk of his fine fair head. He looked a very stormy Phœbus now, but still every inch that grand young god. “Well, Sprawson?” “I’m sure Cave can tell you better than I can, sir,” says Sprawson of the wicked humour. “But Sprawson will make the most of it,” says the cricketer with icy sneer.