“Your nose bleeding? That’s the third time your nose has bled this week, and other boys have also come with their noses bleeding.”
“Do you doubt my word, sir?” asked Wilton, his handkerchief still held up, and assuming an injured air.
“I should be sorry to do so until you give me reason,” answered the master, courteously. “It seems a strange circumstance, but you may go.”
It would have been very easy to see whether his nose was bleeding or not, but the master was trying, very unsuccessfully at present, whether implicit confidence would produce a sense of honour among the boys.
Wilton went out hardly concealing his laughter, and in ten minutes returned with the verses, finished and written out. “There,” he said, “Ken did those for me; he knocked them off in five minutes. Ken’s an awfully clever fellow, though he never opens a book. Don’t bore yourself with verses any more; I’ll get them done for you.”
Charlie glanced at the paper, and saw at once that the verses were perfectly done. “Do you mean to show up that copy as your own, Wilton?”
“Of course I do.”
“But we are marked for them.”
“Hear! hear! thanks for the information. So much the better. I shall get a jolly good mark.”
“Shut up, young innocence, and don’t be a muff,” said another Noelite. “We all do the same thing. Take what heaven sends you and be glad to get it.”