ced them on his arm, he walked towards the door
with his face still turned away from us.

"Oh, don't go, Doe. Don't be a sloppy ass," I said, feeling that I
had been fairly trapped into deserting a fellow-victim, and backing
our common tyrant.

My appeal Doe treated as though he had not heard it; and Penny,
certain that his victory was won, and that he had no further need
of my support, kicked it away with the sneer: "Hit Doe, and Ray's
bruised! What a David and Jonathan we're going to be! How we agree
like steak and kidney!... Rather a nice expression, that."

Penny's commentary was thus turned inwards upon himself, in an
affectionate criticism of his vocabulary, to show the utter
detachment of his interest from the pathetic exit of Edgar Doe. For
now Doe had reached the door, which he opened, passed, and slammed.
In a twinkling I had opened it again, and was looking down the
corridor. There was no sign of my friend anywhere. The moment he had
slammed the door he must have run.

I returned to the preparation room, and Penny sighed, as much as to
say: "What a pity little boys are so petulant and quarrelsome." But
the victory was his, as it always was, and he could think of other
things. There was a clock on the wall behind him, but, too
comfortable to turn his head, he asked me:

"What's the beastly?"

I glanced at the clock, and intimated, sulkily enough, that the
beastly was twenty minutes past nine. He groaned.

"Oh! Ah! An hour's sweat with Radley. Oh, hang! Blow! Damn!"

He stood up, stretched himself, yawned, apologised, got his books,
and occasionally tossed a remark to me, as if he were quite unaware
that I was not only trying to sulk, but also badly wanted him to
know it. As I looked for my books, I sought for the rudest and most
painful insult I could offer him. My duty to Doe demanded that it
should be something quite uncommon. And from a really fine selection
I had just chosen: "You're the biggest liar I've ever met, and, for
all I know, you're as big a thief," when I turned round and found he
was gone. Pennybet always left the field as its master.

Sec.2

Within Radley's spacious class-room some twenty of us took our way
to our desks. Radley mounted his low platform, and, resting his
knuckles on his writing-table, gazed down upon us. He was a man of
over six feet, with the shoulders, chest, and waist of a forcing
batsman. His neck, perhaps, was a little too big, the fault of a
powerful frame