an
instant that you are on a par with Caesar and me, or even the old
Caterpillar--for you ain't."

"I know that," said John, humbly.

"Don't forget it, or there may be ructions."

"I shan't forget it."

"That's right. And, by the way, you're getting into the habit of
hanging about Caesar, which bores him to death. Stop it."

But to this John made no reply. He read dislike in Scaife's bold eyes,
detected it in his clear peremptory voice, felt it in the cruel twist
of the arm. And he had brains enough to know that Scaife was not the
boy to dislike any one without reason. John crawled to the conclusion
that Scaife had become jealous of his increasing intimacy with Desmond.

However, when the three boys were preparing their Greek for First
School, Scaife seemed his old self, friendly, amusing, and cool as a
cucumber. Long ago he had initiated John into Manorite methods of work.

"Our object is," he explained to the new boy, "to get through the
'swat' with as little squandering of valuable time as possible. It
doesn't pay to be skewed. We must mug up our 'cons' well enough to
scrape along without 'puns' and extra school."

The three co-operated. Out of forty lines of Vergil, Scaife would do
fifteen, John fifteen, and the Caterpillar ten; _ten_, because, as he
pointed out, he had been nearly three years in the school. Then each
fellow in turn construed his lines for the benefit of the others. A
difficult passage was taken by Scaife to a clever friend in the Fifth.
Sometimes Scaife would be absent twenty minutes, returning flushed of
face, and slightly excited. John wondered if he had been drinking, and
wondered also what Caesar would say if he knew. About this time fear
possessed his soul that Caesar would come into the Manor and be taught
by Scaife to drink. An occasional nightmare took the form of a
desperate struggle between himself and Scaife, in which Scaife, by
virtue of superior strength and skill, had the mastery, dragging off
the beloved Caesar, to plunge with him into fathomless pools of Scotch
whisky. Somehow in these horrid dreams, Caesar played an impressive
part. Scaife and John fought for his body, while he looked on, an
absurd state of affairs, never--as John reflected in his waking
hours--likely to happen in real life. Of all boys Caesar seemed to be
the best equipped to fight his own battles, and to take, as he would
have put it, "jolly good care of himself."

After the first of t