“So had you!” he thundered then, not like a great man at all, but in a voice that gave some idea of that homeward tramp and its recriminations, in which Sprawson was suddenly felt to be having the last word now. “But surely Major Mangles interviewed you first?” inquired Heriot, with becoming gravity. “Oh, yes; he took us under the trees and asked us questions,” said Sprawson, forcing the gay note a little for the first time. “Questions he’d no earthly right to ask!” cried Cave with confidence. “You didn’t take that tone with Major Mangles, I hope, Cave?” “I daresay I did, sir.” “Then I can’t say I wonder at his letting you both walk back. Of course, if you didn’t answer his questions satisfactorily, it might alter his whole view of the matter, at least so far as you two were concerned in it.” “We couldn’t tell him more than we knew ourselves, sir,” protested Sprawson. “Not more,” said Heriot, pensively. “No—certainly not more!” It was only his tone that added “if as much”—and only the few who heard through it. “I hope, at any rate, that you got your tea?” said Heriot, with a brisk glance at the clock over the row of cups. Cave _major_ looked blacker than before, but Sprawson brightened at once. “Oh, yes, sir, thank you! Lady Augusta sent for us on purpose, and it ended in our handing round the cups and things. That was the redeeming feature of the afternoon. But of course I’m only speaking for myself.” Cave’s chiselled nostrils spoke for him. “Well, there seems no more to be said,” remarked Heriot, in valedictory voice. The attentive throng parted before his stride. “I must confess,” he added, however, turning at the door, “that I myself don’t understand 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. CHAPTER XVII