It was plain that 'the cock of the walk' was seriously hurt or alarmed by what Warren had said, for he ceased to crow as loudly as usual, and walked home without noticing what his satellites said, his eyes bent on the ground, and evidently lost in thought over something that disturbed him more than the prospect of a fight with Warren.
Of course, as this was the latest phase of the scholarship boy question, it occupied more of the thought and attention than the earlier question; and so Horace walked into school the next morning chatting with one or two others, and no protesting hisses were raised.
It was noticed that Warren was not with him, and he looked round anxiously from time to time in search of his friend. But the day passed, and he did not appear, and the boys' spirits were damped a little in consequence, for they remembered now that they had heard that a blow on the head might prove dangerous to Warren.
But, to the relief of everybody, the two friends were seen coming along the road together the next morning, and when Taylor appeared round a bend in the road Warren walked up and joined him.
'Look here, Taylor, I had no business to say what I did the other day, for I can't fight you, it seems. My father has forbidden it, because——'
'Then you won't repeat what you said the other day?' interrupted Taylor eagerly.
'What do you take me for? I should be a cad if I did. Besides, I can see now that I have no business to blame you for what——No, I'm not going to say anything,' he whispered, in answer to Taylor's frown. 'Let every tub stand on its own bottom, I say.'
'All right, old fellow, we'll let the matter drop, then, and, mind, mum is the word between us.'
'Right you are,' said Warren, and then he ran off to join Horace, for he had drawn Taylor aside to say this, as neither of them wished their talk to be overheard.
Whatever it might be that Warren had heard concerning the antecedents of Taylor's family, he could not be more sensitive upon the point than Warren was over his inability to fight without danger to his life. For a schoolboy to be told that he cannot stand up in a fair, square fight without bringing the danger to his antagonist of being charged with manslaughter, had brought such a shock to the boy that it was this, rather than the effects of the fall, that made his father forbid him going to school the previous day. The lad had wondered how he was to get out of finishing the fight already begun; and it demanded a greater amount of courage on his part to walk up to Taylor and ask him to let the matter end where it was, than to stand up before him for a turn at fisticuffs, even with the almost dead certainty of getting the worst of it.