by drop.

As for Mike, he played for the second, and hoped for the day.

* * * * *

His opportunity came at last. It will be remembered that on the
morning after the Great Picnic the headmaster made an announcement in
Hall to the effect that, owing to an outbreak of chicken-pox in the
town, all streets except the High Street would be out of bounds. This
did not affect the bulk of the school, for most of the shops to which
any one ever thought of going were in the High Street. But there were
certain inquiring minds who liked to ferret about in odd corners.

Among these was one Leather-Twigg, of Seymour's, better known in
criminal circles as Shoeblossom.

Shoeblossom was a curious mixture of the Energetic Ragger and the
Quiet Student. On a Monday evening you would hear a hideous uproar
proceeding from Seymour's junior day-room; and, going down with a
swagger-stick to investigate, you would find a tangled heap of
squealing humanity on the floor, and at the bottom of the heap,
squealing louder than any two others, would be Shoeblossom, his collar
burst and blackened and his face apoplectically crimson. On the
Tuesday afternoon, strolling in some shady corner of the grounds you
would come upon him lying on his chest, deep in some work of fiction
and resentful of interruption. On the Wednesday morning he would be in
receipt of four hundred lines from his housemaster for breaking three
windows and a gas-globe. Essentially a man of moods, Shoeblossom.

It happened about the date of the Geddington match that he took out
from the school library a copy of "The Iron Pirate," and for the next
day or two he wandered about like a lost spirit trying to find a
sequestered spot in which to read it. His inability to hit on such a
spot was rendered more irritating by the fact that, to judge from the
first few chapters (which he had managed to get through during prep.
one night under the eye of a short-sighted master), the book was
obviously the last word in hot stuff. He tried the junior day-room,
but people threw cushions at him. He tried out of doors, and a ball
hit from a neighbouring net nearly scalped him. Anything in the nature
of concentration became impossible in these circumstances.

Then he recollected that in a quiet backwater off the High Street
there was a little confectioner's shop, where tea might be had at a
reasonable sum, and also, what was more important, peace.

He made his way t