"What the deuce did you mean by telling Caesar that the Manorites drink?"

"Oh, Scaife--I didn't."

"You gave us away."

"_Us?_" John's eyes opened. "_You_ don't drink with 'em?" he faltered.

"Don't bother your head about what I do, or don't do." Scaife answered
roughly; "and because you took the Lower Remove don't think for 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 be
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
a