'Well, we shall hear all about it when they come, I dare say. Now run away, little girl, for I want to get on with my lessons, now I have got the book I wanted.'
'Oh, that was what you wanted! You boys are so careless. It is a good job you can borrow of each other;' and Florence went away, leaving Leonard to do his lessons or reflect upon the strange events of the evening.
After a few angry thoughts concerning Taylor and his behaviour towards him that evening, he began wondering once more whether it was an uncle his parents had gone to see, and then whether he was rich, and would make them wealthy too. He had never thought so much of money and what it could do for its possessor until lately, but Taylor and Curtis both belonged to wealthy families, and he thought of what they could do. He called to mind the half-sovereign and the cigarettes he had seen them smoking, and he had no doubt they were going to a famous billiard-room in the town. Billiards, cigars, and half-sovereigns made up an entrancing picture to the boy, and he sat and dreamed of these things, and wished he had plenty of money, until half the evening was gone; and although he declined to go to bed at the usual hour, he only half knew his lessons when he did go.
The next morning he started for school in good time, for fear he should miss Taylor, and be compelled to have those bottles on his mind all the morning. But Taylor was looking out for him at the corner of the road where they usually met. He was in a different mood this morning, and flattered and praised the lad for having got the chemicals without anyone finding out what he had done.
'You carry the bag to the gate, and I'll take it of you there, and no one will ever see those bottles again, I can promise you.'
'But how are you going to manage?' asked Leonard.
'Oh, I have made my plans! I have to work in "the stinkery" this morning, so the thing will be easy enough when I have once got your bottles up in the "lab.," and they'll go in my pockets for me to take them up there. Oh, never fear! we shall get rid of that board school beggar this time, for Skeats is awfully particular about his stuff, and he'll never forgive him for using chemicals like these away from "the stinkery." I know where to put them till I want them, so you can give them to me in a minute, and I will put them into the pockets of this dust-coat I am carrying; I brought it with me on purpose.'
Leonard breathed a sigh of relief when the bottles were safely transferred from the bag to the inside pockets of the fashionable coat.
'If the stopper should come out of that bottle of sulphuric acid, your coat won't be worth much,' he said, as Taylor swung the coat over his arm.
'The stoppers are all right, I can see,' he said; but still he carried the coat carefully, and went at once to hang it up when he got to the school.