"The school went on just as usual?"
"No-o, ma'am "—I hesitated—"not quite just as usual. Mr. Stimcoe was unwell."
"Drunk?"
"My dear Miss Belcher!" put in the scandalized Plinny. "A scholar, and such a gentleman!"
"Fiddlestick-end!" snapped the unconscionable lady, not removing her eyes from mine. "Was this man Stimcoe drunk, eh? No; I beg your pardon," she corrected herself. "I oughtn't to be asking a boy to tell tales out of school. 'Thou shalt not say anything to get another fellow into trouble'—that's the first and last commandment—eh, Harry Brooks? But, my good soul"—she turned on Plinny—"if 'drunk and incapable' isn't written over the whole of that seminary, you may call me a Dutchwoman!"
"There's a point or so clear enough," she announced, after a pause, when I had finished my story.
"We must placard the whole country with a description of that prisoner chap Glass," said Mr. Jack Rogers; "and I'd best be off to Falmouth and get the bills printed at once."
"Indeed?" said Miss Belcher, dryly. "And pray how are you proposing to describe him?"
"Why, as for that, I should have thought Harry's description here, backed up by Mr. Goodfellow's, was enough to lay a trail upon any man. My dear Lydia, a fellow roaming the country in a red coat, drill trousers, and a japanned hat!"
"It would obviously excite remark: so obviously that the likelihood might even occur to the man himself."