d I, staring down at him, "that's nonsense!"

"Oh, very well," he answered promptly; "then we're the 'Backward Sons
of Gentlemen'--that's down in the prospectus--and we're fetching
water for Mother Stimcoe, because the turncock cut off the company's
water this morning! See? But you won't blow the gaff on the old
girl, will you?"

"Are you all there is, you three?" I asked, after considering them a
moment.

"We're all the boarders. My name's Ted Bates--they call me Doggy
Bates--and my father's a captain out in India; and these are Bob
Pilkington and Scotty Maclean. You may call him Redhead, being too
big to punch; and, talking of that, you'll have to fight Bully
Stokes."

"Is he a day-boy?" I asked.

"He's cock of Rogerses up the hill, and he wants it badly.
Stimcoes and Rogerses are hated rivals. If you can whack Bully
Stokes for us--"

"But Mrs. Stimcoe told me that you were taking a walk with the
butler," I interrupted.

Master Bates winked.

"Would you like to see him?"

He beckoned me to an open window, and we gazed through it upon a bare
back kitchen, and upon an extremely corpulent man in an armchair,
slumbering, with a yellow bandanna handkerchief over his head to
protect it from the flies. Master Bates whipped out a pea-shooter,
and blew a pea on to the exposed lobe of the sleeper's ear.

"D--n!" roared the corpulent one, leaping up in wrath. But we were
in hiding behind the yard-wall before he could pull the bandanna from
his face.

"He's the bailiff," explained Master Bates. "He's in possession.
Oh, you'll get quite friendly with him in time. Down in the town
they call him Mother Stimcoe's lodger, he comes so often. But, I
say, don't go and blow the gaff on the old girl."

On our way to the coach-office that evening I felt--as the saying
is--my heart in my mouth. Miss Plinlimmon spoke sympathetically of
Mr. Stimcoe's state of health, and with delicacy of his
absent-mindedness, "so natural in a scholar." I discovered long
afterwards that Mr. Stimcoe, having retired to cash a note for her,
had brought back a strong smell of brandy and eighteen-pence less
than the strict amount of her change. I knew in my heart that my new
schoolmaster and his wife were a pair of frauds, and yet I choked
down the impulse to speak. Perhaps Master Bates's loyalty kept me on
my mettle.

The dear soul and I bade one another farewell, she not without tears.
The coach bore her away; and I walked back th