"What do you mean?"

"Why don't you take the holiday?"

"What? Not turn up on Friday!"

"Yes. I'm not going to."

Neville-Smith stopped and stared. Wyatt was unmoved.

"You're what?"

"I simply sha'n't go to school."

"You're rotting."

"All right."

"No, but, I say, ragging barred. Are you just going to cut off, though
the holiday's been stopped?"

"That's the idea."

"You'll get sacked."

"I suppose so. But only because I shall be the only one to do it. If
the whole school took Friday off, they couldn't do much. They couldn't
sack the whole school."

"By Jove, nor could they! I say!"

They walked on, Neville-Smith's mind in a whirl, Wyatt whistling.

"I say," said Neville-Smith after a pause. "It would be a bit of a
rag."

"Not bad."

"Do you think the chaps would do it?"

"If they understood they wouldn't be alone."

Another pause.

"Shall I ask some of them?" said Neville-Smith.

"Do."

"I could get quite a lot, I believe."

"That would be a start, wouldn't it? I could get a couple of dozen
from Wain's. We should be forty or fifty strong to start with."

"I say, what a score, wouldn't it be?"

"Yes."

"I'll speak to the chaps to-night, and let you know."

"All right," said Wyatt. "Tell them that I shall be going anyhow. I
should be glad of a little company."

* * * * *

The school turned in on the Thursday night in a restless, excited way.
There were mysterious whisperings and gigglings. Groups kept forming
in corners apart, to disperse casually and innocently on the approach
of some person in authority.

An air of expectancy permeated each of the houses.

CHAPTER X

THE GREAT PICNIC

Morning school at Wrykyn started at nine o'clock. At that hour there
was a call-over in each of the form-rooms. After call-over the forms
proceeded to the Great Hall for prayers.

A strangely desolate feeling was in the air at nine o'clock on the
Friday morning. Sit in the grounds of a public school any afternoon in
the summer holidays, and you will get exactly the same sensation of
being alone in the world as came to the dozen or so day-boys who
bicycled through the gates that morning. Wrykyn was a boarding-school
for the most part, but it had its leaven of day-boys. The majority of
these lived in the town, and walked to school. A few, however, whose
homes were farther away, came on bicycles. One plutocrat did the
journey in a motor-car, rather to