On the night before the Confirmation, Cecil once more presented himself. “I came to tell you, sir——”
“Not if it’s anything in detail, Aviolet,” the clergyman said almost pleadingly. “To-morrow is to be a new beginning for you, isn’t it? Let the dead past bury its dead. Of course,” he added unwillingly, “if you’ve anything serious on your mind, I don’t want to prevent your unburdening yourself. But if it’s some quibble of conscience, I think you’d better suppress it.”
“It’s serious,” said Cecil, his face pale and his eyes shining.
The clergyman reluctantly resigned himself.
“I—I came to tell you, sir, that I deliberately cheated over the History papers at the end of last term. I saw the questions, before we got our papers.”
“How?” rapped out the master.
“On your desk, sir, when you sent me in here to wait for you one day.”
The boy spoke more boldly and confidently than he had done yet, and there was nothing of the shrinking and stumbling manner that had been evident in his first conversation with Perriman. He faced the master steadily, looking straight up at him.
Perriman remembered that Cecil Aviolet had done well in History.
“What did you do when you saw the questions on my desk?”