of sight, in case
Florence should decide to do her lessons with him this evening.

But it seemed as though everything was to favour him in what he knew
was wrong-doing. His sister told him at tea-time that she must do her
lessons in her own room, for she had an extra piece of history to
study, as she was working for the history prize to be given at
Christmas.

'Oh, all right,' said Leonard, with his mouth full of bread and jam.
'It's all a girl can do, I suppose, get a prize now and then.'

'You can't do that if you are a boy!' retorted Florence; and then
there was a little more sparring and wrangling, until the housemaid
appeared to clear the table. Florence went upstairs to her lesson
then, and Leonard sauntered off to the little study and lighted the
gas, for it was getting dusk.

When the gas was lighted he went to look at his bottles, and then saw
in the corner, near where he had hidden them, an old leather bag of
his father's. He remembered now that he had been told he might have it
for his books when the satchel was worn out; and he decided to take it
at once. 'This is good fortune indeed! Taylor says he'll take care
nobody finds out, if I only get the stuff there. Taylor is a smart
fellow, and so is his father, or he could not have made a big fortune
in a year or two, as Taylor says he did. My dad won't make one in a
life-time, I'm afraid, and I shall just have to go plodding on at hard
work, unless I can learn a thing or two from Taylor by-and-by.'

While he had been speaking to himself he had been wrapping each bottle
up separately in a piece of old newspaper and putting them into the
bag. Then he took the written paper given him by Taylor and the
half-sovereign, and decided to go at once and get his bottles filled.
He must tell the chemist to seal the stoppers down securely, or there
would be such a smell from the bag that it would betray them before it
could be got into 'the stinkery' at school. He put a book in the bag
as well as the bottles, so that if his sister should discover that he
had been out, he could say he had been to borrow a book from one of
his schoolfellows.

He went out by the back gate, for he did not want anyone to know he
was going if he could help it, and Florence might hear him shut the
front door. He knew where to go, and as he brought his father's
private bottles and half-a-sovereign to pay for what he had, the
chemist served him without demur. He wondered a little what the doc