So into the private room dived the two youthful spendthrifts, and ordered tarts and ginger-beer and ices, and then seated themselves at their ease to enjoy this forbidden feast.
"Ain't they prime, Jimmy?" gloated the fat boy, as he put himself outside a three-cornered puff; and Jimmy, with his mouth full of tart, was understood to reply that they were "ripping."
The shop-bell tinkled, and Jimmy jumped up. He was not quite sure who might come in, and he squinted through one of those convenient holes in the blind, a fragment of tart still in his hand.
"I say, it is Elgert's man!" he said, looking round. "I wonder what he wants here?"
"Oh, he doesn't signify. Let us enjoy ourselves, for we cannot stay long, and we shall have to run all the way back."
That eating cakes was a good preparation for running a mile is open to question, but the two boys evidently had no doubts concerning the matter; and so they sat there, while the man who had entered talked to Brown over the counter, and, seeing that the door was not quite closed, the boys could not help hearing a little of what passed.
"I'll bide my time, Brown," Elgert's man said. "I will not be impatient, but I will humble that young cub yet! I hate him even more than I do his father. He treats a man like the dirt beneath his feet!"
"So he does," muttered Jimmy Green to Tinkle; "that is quite right!"
And Tinkle nodded. He was busy with an ice just at the moment.
"I say," said Brown to the man, "if you are not in a hurry, I wish that you would run over to the inn and ask them to change me this five-pound note? It is one which I changed for one of the boys from the school the other day."