“It’s all over then, I suppose,” said Bradwell.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied to him. “A thing that has never begun can’t be all over”; which words of Mabel’s seemed to knock the heart out of Bradwell.
Then the gardener came along, and I didn’t hear anything else. Of corse, I couldn’t help hearing what I had done, though I tried hard not to, and kept feeding my catterpeller like anything all the time.
Two days after I had to carry another note to Mabel, and found one waiting for Bradwell in the usual place; so they must have made it up. Then came the beginning of my misforchunes with Browne. He found the snake appeering to Sulla in my Latin grammar, and called me up and said he knew very well I hadn’t drawn it myself, but wanted to know who had. He said it was wrong to the Doctor to ruin our books, and that he had seen in several different books the same snake, evidently done by the same boy, owing to them being so much similar.
But the very identical thing had happened in another class--to Steggles, Bradwell having drawn him the same picture; and knowing what Steggles said, being a chap who is frightfully cunning, I said the same now to Browne. I said I left the book on my desk, and somebody came along and done it while I was out of the room. Browne seemed inclined not to believe this. Anyway, he took the Latin grammar away with him. But I heard no more about it till the next evening, when I wanted the book in prep. Remembering Browne had it, I went off to his study and knocked and walked in.
Browne wasn’t there for the moment, and the room was empty. I took the opportunity to look at a rather butiful tobacco-jar of Browne’s which I have seen at a distance on his mantlepiece many times. Passing his table to get to it, I chanced to glance there, and juge of my surprise when the first words I saw at the top of a big sheet of paper were, "To Mabel"! Underneeth was a lot of writing, and the whole table seemed to be littered with paper covered with small bits of separate writing, much of it scratched out and done over again. But the piece with “To Mabel” at the top was all butiful and clean, without anything scratched, being, I suppose, the result of all the other bits put together and neetly copied out.
Well, there I was with my duty towards Bradwell as his fag. Browne had evidently done a verse out of his own head for Mabel Dunston, and had written it in this butiful style, on thick white paper, to send to her. I felt if she got it, knowing what she’d said to Bradwell about Browne, that it was certin she would abbandon Bradwell, him not being any good at poems. I wouldn’t have done it for anybody else in the world but Bradwell; I wouldn’t have done it at all if I had known what the end of it was going to be; but, anyway, at the time it seemed to me, as Bradwell s fag, I ought to do it; so I did.
I took the poem and rolled it up so as not to hurt it, and hooked off to Bradwell. He was in his study, and Trelawny, who shares it with him, being out of the room, I was able to explain. I said:
“If you please, Bradwell, I’ve come from Mr. Browne’s study, and he was not there, and happening by a curious axcident to glance on the table I saw this. Knowing about you and Mabel, and being your fag, I took it.”
“Took what?” said Bradwell.