Psmith Series. P. G. Wodehouse

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      CHAPTER X

      THE GREAT PICNIC

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      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 the scandal of the authorities, who, though unable to interfere, looked askance when compelled by the warning toot of the horn to skip from road to pavement.; A form-master has the strongest objection to being made to skip like a young ram by a boy to whom he has only the day before given a hundred lines for shuffling his feet in form.

      It seemed curious to these cyclists that there should be nobody about.; Punctuality is the politeness of princes, but it was not a leading characteristic of the school; and at three minutes to nine, as a general rule, you might see the gravel in front of the buildings freely dotted with sprinters, trying to get in in time to answer their names.

      It was curious that there should be nobody about to-day.; A wave of reform could scarcely have swept through the houses during the night.

      And yet—­where was everybody?

      Time only deepened the mystery.; The form-rooms, like the gravel, were empty.

      The cyclists looked at one another in astonishment.; What could it mean?

      It was an occasion on which sane people wonder if their brains are not playing them some unaccountable trick.

      “I say,” said Willoughby, of the Lower Fifth, to Brown, the only other occupant of the form-room, “the old man did stop the holiday to-day, didn’t he?”

      “Just what I was going to ask you,” said Brown.; “It’s jolly rum.; I distinctly remember him giving it out in hall that it was going to be stopped because of the O.W.’s day row.”

      “So do I. I can’t make it out.; Where is everybody?”

      “They can’t all be late.”

      “Somebody would have turned up by now.; Why, it’s just striking.”

      “Perhaps he sent another notice round the houses late last night, saying it was on again all right.; I say, what a swindle if he did.; Some one might have let us know.; I should have got up an hour later.”

      “So should I.”

      “Hullo, here is somebody.”

      It was the master of the Lower Fifth, Mr. Spence.; He walked briskly into the room, as was his habit.; Seeing the obvious void, he stopped in his stride, and looked puzzled.

      “Willoughby.; Brown.; Are you the only two here?; Where is everybody?”

      “Please, sir, we don’t know.; We were just wondering.”

      “Have you seen nobody?”

      “No, sir.”

      “We were just wondering, sir, if the holiday had been put on again, after all.”

      “I’ve heard nothing about it.; I should have received some sort of intimation if it had been.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Do you mean to say that you have seen nobody, Brown?”

      “Only about a dozen fellows, sir.; The usual lot who come on bikes, sir.”

      “None of the boarders?”

      “No, sir.; Not a single one.”

      “This is extraordinary.”

      Mr. Spence pondered.

      “Well,” he said, “you two fellows had better go along up to Hall.; I shall go to the Common Room and make inquiries.; Perhaps, as you say, there is a holiday to-day, and the notice was not brought to me.”

      Mr. Spence told himself, as he walked to the Common Room, that this might be a possible solution of the difficulty.; He was not a house-master, and lived by himself in rooms in the town.; It was just conceivable that they might have forgotten to tell him of the change in the arrangements.

      But in the Common Room the same perplexity reigned.; Half a dozen masters were seated round the room, and a few more were standing.; And they were all very puzzled.

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