"Yes, sir."
"This is an exceedingly serious matter."
Wyatt nodded agreement with this view.
"Exceedingly."
The pen rose and fell with the rapidity of the cylinder of a motor-car. Wyatt, watching it, became suddenly aware that the thing was hypnotising him. In a minute or two he would be asleep.
"I wish you wouldn't do that, father. Tap like that, I mean. It's sending me to sleep."
"James!"
"It's like a woodpecker."
"Studied impertinence--"
"I'm very sorry. Only it was sending me off."
Mr. Wain suspended tapping operations, and resumed the thread of his discourse.
"I am sorry, exceedingly, to see this attitude in you, James. It is not fitting. It is in keeping with your behaviour throughout. Your conduct has been lax and reckless in the extreme. It is possible that you imagine that the peculiar circumstances of our relationship secure you from the penalties to which the ordinary boy--"
"No, sir."
"I need hardly say," continued Mr. Wain, ignoring the interruption, "that I shall treat you exactly as I should treat any other member of my house whom I had detected in the same misdemeanour."
"Of course," said Wyatt, approvingly.
"I must ask you not to interrupt me when I am speaking to you, James. I say that your punishment will be no whit less severe than would be that of any other boy. You have repeatedly proved yourself lacking in ballast and a respect for discipline in smaller ways, but this is a far more serious matter. Exceedingly so. It is impossible for me to overlook it, even were I disposed to do so. You are aware of the penalty for such an action as yours?"
"The sack," said Wyatt laconically.
"It is expulsion. You must leave the school. At once."
Wyatt nodded.
"As you know, I have already secured a nomination for you in the London and Oriental Bank. I shall write to-morrow to the manager asking him to receive you at once--"
"After all, they only gain an extra fortnight of me."
"You will leave directly I receive his letter. I shall arrange with the headmaster that you are withdrawn privately--"
"Not the sack?"
"Withdrawn privately. You will not go to school to-morrow. Do you understand? That is all. Have you anything to say?"
Wyatt reflected.
"No, I don't think--"
His eye fell on a tray bearing a decanter and a syphon.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Can't I mix you a whisky and soda, father, before I go off to bed?"
"Well?" said Mike.
Wyatt kicked off his slippers, and began to undress.
"What happened?"
"We chatted."
"Has he let you off?"
"Like a gun. I shoot off almost immediately. To-morrow I take a well-earned rest away from school, and the day after I become the gay young bank-clerk, all amongst the ink and ledgers."
Mike was miserably silent.
"Buck up," said Wyatt cheerfully. "It would have happened anyhow in another fortnight. So why worry?"
Mike was still silent. The reflection was doubtless philosophic, but it failed to comfort him.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE AFTERMATH
Bad news spreads quickly. By the quarter to eleven interval next day the facts concerning Wyatt and Mr. Wain were public property. Mike, as an actual spectator of the drama, was in great request as an informant. As he told the story to a group of sympathisers outside the school shop, Burgess came up, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.
"Anybody seen young-oh, here you are. What's all this about Jimmy Wyatt? They're saying he's been sacked, or some rot."
"So he has-at least, he's got to leave."
"What? When?"
"He's left already. He isn't coming to school again."
Burgess's first thought, as befitted a good cricket captain, was for his team.
"And the Ripton match on Saturday!"
Nobody seemed to have anything except silent sympathy at his command.
"Dash the man! Silly ass! What did he want to do it for! Poor old Jimmy, though!" he added after a pause. "What rot for him!"
"Beastly," agreed Mike.
"All the same," continued Burgess, with a return to the austere manner of the captain of cricket, "he might have chucked playing the goat till after the Ripton match. Look here, young Jackson, you'll turn out for fielding with the first this afternoon. You'll play on Saturday."