'Why, if he isn't nice, don't speak to him. Of course you can't help it if he does his lessons better than you do, or you must work at them a little more carefully, I suppose, if you mean to get ahead of him in the class and take some of the prizes!'
'Oh, prizes be bothered!' exclaimed Leonard crossly, for his sister's advice had not pleased him at all. 'I tell you we want to get rid of the fellow if we can. Taylor says the head master ought to have refused to take a scholarship boy.'
'Perhaps father could interfere,' said Florence. 'He has a good deal to do with the Council.'
'If you breathe a word of what I've said to father, I'll never speak to you again!' said her brother vehemently. 'The idea of such a thing! Tell father, indeed! What would the other fellows say, do you think? No, no, we can fight our own battle, and defend the honour of the school in our own way. A nice hash you would make of everything. You are a worse duffer than I thought, though I don't think you are a tell-tale.'
'Of course I shall not tell father what we have been talking about, if that is what you mean,' said Duffy, a little indignantly. The tears were shining in her eyes, for she was very fond of her brother, and always ready to help him whenever she was allowed, and so she felt this scornful rebuff the more keenly.
'There, you needn't cry over it. I suppose you can't help being only a girl. But mind, if you say a word to father or mother of what I have told you, I never will speak to you again!' And with this last threat Leonard turned with a sigh to his lessons.
'I've wasted a lot of time over you this evening,' he said, after a short silence, during which Duffy had been muttering over a French verb. 'I'm awfully disappointed about it,' he went on, 'for I shall have to tell Taylor and the rest that you're nothing but a duffer.'
'Because I can't tell you how to manage with a boy that I don't know; it isn't fair, Len, and you say boys always are fair,' said his sister, in a tone of protest, as she turned to her lessons once more.
Leonard tried to follow her example, but he could not fix his attention upon problems in Euclid with that greater problem unsolved—how the honour of the school was to be saved, and the new boy got rid of? That was really what Taylor and one or two leading spirits had decided must be done; but how to do it was the puzzle!
Leonard's lessons were very imperfectly prepared that night, and every moment he could snatch the next morning was given to looking over his books, that he might not utterly fail when he was called upon to produce what he should have learned; and he was conning over one task as he walked to school, when he was overtaken by Taylor and the rest.