Curtis yawned. 'You'd better give in, and do as Taylor orders you.'

'Well, then, I should peach, and no mistake, if I told my father we had sent the fellow to Coventry for the last month. "What for?" he would say in his quiet way, while he looked into your very soul, so that you knew you must make a clean breast of everything. No, thank you. I don't mind going with you and Taylor and two or three other fellows as a sort of deputation from----'

'Deputation be bothered!' interrupted Taylor viciously. 'Why should we go cap in hand to ask your father to take the fellow away? It ought to be enough for you to tell him that the school don't like it, and that we are determined to uphold the honour of Torrington's.'

'Yes, that's it. We don't mean to let the school go to the dogs to please anybody,' said Curtis lazily.

'Yes; and what are we to do next, for the beggar don't seem to care now whether we send him to Coventry or not, and Skeats is giving the game away by letting him go to the chemistry "lab." every dinner hour.'

'Let's send Skeats to Coventry,' said Curtis.

Leonard laughed at the suggestion, but Taylor grew more angry.

'It's no good fooling over this now,' he said. 'I have been talking to some of the fellows in the sixth, and they have made up their minds not to have the beggar among them.'

'All right, let them get rid of him, then,' said Curtis. 'I don't see why we should do their dirty work. When's he going up?'

'He swats as though he expected to go next term,' complained Leonard Morrison, who had lost his place in the cla.s.s that morning through Horace.

'Swats! It's shameful the pace that fellow goes with his lessons; and the masters think we ought to do the same,' foamed Taylor.

'Ah, they've tried to force it upon all of us,' observed Curtis; 'but I won't let it disturb me, I can tell you.'

'You don't mind being the dunce of the school,' said Leonard, with a short laugh.

'I don't care what the fellows call me, so long as they let me alone,' said the young giant, still with his hands in his pockets. He was getting tired of the discussion, and Taylor saw that it was of little use trying to threaten Leonard, and so he walked sulkily away, to try and think out some other means of getting rid of the obnoxious scholarship boy.

CHAPTER III.

THE c.o.c.k OF THE WALK.

'I say, Duffy, there's an awful row among the fellows at school; Taylor and Curtis are like raging bulls over this new fellow, and they say it's all the pater's fault.'

The brother and sister were sitting at their lessons in the little room known as the study, as they sat when this story opened. Several weeks, however, had elapsed since that time, and Florence, having her own cares and interests to think of, had well-nigh forgotten how she had been appealed to in the matter of the new boy.

'What are you talking about, Len?' she asked, after a pause, during which she had been muttering over a French verb, with her hand covering the page, by way of testing whether she knew her lesson.

'That's like a girl!' answered her brother tartly. 'I have told you more than once or twice about that new boy at Torrington's, and now you ask me what I am talking about.'

'Oh, well, I didn't know he was so interesting as all that. You told me a week or two ago that you had sent him to Coventry and settled him, and so of course I thought it was all over,' said the young lady, propping her chin in her hands and looking across at her brother.

'But if a fellow won't be settled, what are you to do? I want you to tell me that, Duffy.'

The young lady shook her head. 'Tell us all about it, Len, I'm not very busy to-night.'

'Well, we sent that fellow to Coventry, as I told you--not that he's a bad sort of chap; only he came from one of those beastly board schools in the town, and we didn't know who he was or what he was, and he kept his mouth shut about his people, and so the fellows took up the notion that Torrington's would soon go to the dogs if we let that sort of cattle stay there, and so we said he must go. Well, we thought the Coventry game had done the trick for us just at first, for you never saw such an awful a.s.s as he made of himself one morning at all the cla.s.ses. "Howard, are you ill?" said Skeats at last, in his sharp way.

And we thought the beggar would get off for the rest of the lessons.

But, if you'll believe it, he was game enough to say, "No, sir, I'm quite well," which was as good as telling Skeats he was a fool for asking such a question.'

Florence nodded. 'I like plucky boys,' she said approvingly.

'Well, it was a plucky thing to do, I daresay, but it didn't help him much with Skeats that day, for he never spared him a bit, as he did not take the excuse that had been offered him, and he blundered and floundered worse than ever, so that Curtis, the biggest dunce in the cla.s.s, answered for him, and took his place in the cla.s.s.'

'What a shame!' said Florence, pityingly.

'Well, I felt sorry for the poor little beggar at last, for we knew he had swatted well over the lesson, and yet he seemed to have lost his wits. "That's done the trick," Taylor whispered to me, when Skeats frowned at him once for being such an a.s.s. "We shan't see that scholarship swatter here any more."'

'Swatter,' repeated Florence. 'But I thought you said he didn't know his lessons.'

'Ah! that once. But it wasn't for the want of swatting, for it was just that that put the fellows' backs up. He comes into the school looking as meek as a rabbit. "I've been to the board school," he says to Taylor, when he put him through the usual mill. Not a word did he say about French and Latin, and so Taylor thought he would have him for a f.a.g, as he was a junior; but we soon found out that we should have to swat over our lessons, and no mistake, if we were to keep out of rows with the masters. He set the pace, don't you see, till Taylor got as mad as a hatter when he lost his place at the top of the cla.s.s, and then he said this new boy would have to go.'

'Because he learned his lessons better than the rest!' exclaimed his sister.

'Well, not that exactly--of course not,' replied her brother; 'but you see he was only a board school boy, and his mother couldn't be a lady, and his brother is only a common carpenter, they say; and so for a fellow like that to come to Torrington's would just ruin the school.

That's why we want to get rid of him, don't you see?'

'No, I don't,' said Florence, indignantly; 'and Taylor and the rest are a set of mean cads!' The expression was not very elegant or ladylike; but she had learned it from her brother, and knew he would feel the reproach conveyed by this word more surely than by anything else she could say.

It stung him into a fierce pa.s.sion of wrath. 'What do girls know about boys' schools and boys' ways?' he demanded.

'I know what you have told me about Taylor and the rest, and I say they are not gentlemen, but a set of mean cads.' She was careful not to include Leonard in this scathing denunciation, for she added, 'I should not like to think my brother would act like that.'

'Oh, well, Duffy, you see you are a girl, and can't be expected to know everything; but I did tell Taylor to-day that I thought we might leave the beggar alone, and let him out of Coventry now.'

'If I was the new boy, I would send you there, and see how you liked it. What are you going to do?' she asked.

'That's just it--just what I wanted to talk to you about. The fellows say it is all the pater's doings that Howard has been sent to Torrington's, and----'

Florence clapped her hands. 'Dear old daddy!' she said. 'He knew what Torrington's wanted. Now go on,' she added.

'It's no good when you interrupt like that. I wanted to tell you what the fellows are saying; and now if I do, you'll just go and peach about the whole thing.'

'Now, Len, did I ever peach about anything you told me? Haven't we always been fair and square to each other?' expostulated his sister, who felt herself insulted by such a charge.

'Yes, you always have been pretty fair for a girl,' admitted her brother, 'and I hope you'll remember that mum must be the word still.

And mind, if you hear about this, you don't know anything, but just tell the pater to ask me about it. I don't want you to go and give your opinion about the school and the fellows, though Curtis and one or two more may be a poor lot. The thing is, they feel themselves insulted by having this scholarship boy sent to Torrington's, and they want me to speak to the pater about it.'

'Oh, do--do, and let me be there when you tell him,' said Florence, her eyes dancing with glee at the prospect.

'Don't be a duffer. Do you think I don't know my own daddy well enough to know that it would be no good going to him with the fellows'

complaints? I told Taylor he had better come and see the pater himself about it.'

'Of course,' nodded Florence, 'that would be the proper way, and I should like to see them do it.' And again the girl laughed.

This seemed to annoy her brother. 'It's all very well for you to laugh,' he said. 'You don't know what it is to be mixed up with such an affair, and I want to know what I am to do.'