'Yes; and what are we to do next, for the beggar don't seem to care now whether we send him to Coventry or not, and Skeats is giving the game away by letting him go to the chemistry "lab." every dinner hour.'
'Let's send Skeats to Coventry,' said Curtis.
Leonard laughed at the suggestion, but Taylor grew more angry.
'It's no good fooling over this now,' he said. 'I have been talking to some of the fellows in the sixth, and they have made up their minds not to have the beggar among them.'
'All right, let them get rid of him, then,' said Curtis. 'I don't see why we should do their dirty work. When's he going up?'
'He swats as though he expected to go next term,' complained Leonard Morrison, who had lost his place in the class that morning through Horace.
'Swats! It's shameful the pace that fellow goes with his lessons; and the masters think we ought to do the same,' foamed Taylor.
'Ah, they've tried to force it upon all of us,' observed Curtis; 'but I won't let it disturb me, I can tell you.'
'You don't mind being the dunce of the school,' said Leonard, with a short laugh.
'I don't care what the fellows call me, so long as they let me alone,' said the young giant, still with his hands in his pockets. He was getting tired of the discussion, and Taylor saw that it was of little use trying to threaten Leonard, and so he walked sulkily away, to try and think out some other means of getting rid of the obnoxious scholarship boy.