Yes, but--"

"That will do. Now I understand why you were so pleased with the job.
It's a profitable thing to help a friend sometimes. Tempest will be
amused when he hears."

"Oh, I say, don't--really I didn't fancy--"

"That will do, I say. Cut--do you hear? I only wanted to know whether
I was right or not in what I told Tempest."

"Oh, but--" pleaded I, with a groan of misery.

"If you don't cut I'll lick you for disobedience."

This, after all my good resolutions and hopes that all was squared and
that before long Tempest would believe in me again!

I slunk away in despair, and curled myself up in my bed that night, the
most miserable boy in Low Heath.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

PRETTY WARM ALL ROUND.

"Dicky, old chap, I'm in a howling mess."

"The same old one, or a new one?"

"It's about those blessed bills of Tempest's--I wish I'd let them alone.
You see, it was this way. How was I to know? I'm sure I never meant
to do anything shady."

"I dare say not, but what _are_ you talking about?"

"Why, I've been regularly let in. You see, I--"

"Look here, old chap, let's hear what it is," said the practical Dicky.

"Why, the fact is, most of the chaps wanted to stand me something when I
squared up with them, and Crofter tries to make out I'm a thief, and
he's going to show me up to Tempest."

"But you didn't let them?"

"Well, yes, one or two. You see, Marple gave me a pencil-sharpener, and
Rammage a strawberry ice, and Ringstead a net-bag and spikes--jolly bad
ones too, they all came out in a week."

"And does Crofter say you swindled him or Tempest?"

"I didn't think I was swindling anybody," said I evasively.

"You made a pretty good thing out of it, though."

"I know. I say, Dicky, what's to be done? I thought I was going to
pull round all square this term--really I did--and now I'm in a regular
fix."

Dicky pondered.

"It was a bit shady," said he, with his refreshing candour; "the sort of
thing Ananias and--"

"Oh, for pity's sake, Dicky, if that's all you've got to say--"

"It's not. I think you'd best make it good somehow. Can't you give
them back?"

"How can I give back the strawberry ice?"

This was a poser, certainly, and set Dicky thinking again.

"Have you got the other things?" asked he.

"No; the pencil-sharpener smashed first time I used it, and the net-bag
got lost at home."

"Awkward. You'll have to buy new ones."

"Who for?"

"Tempest, of cour