“Ye–es, if you really are sorry,” said the little fellow, slowly raising his hand, which was snatched at and forcibly wrung, just as the breakfast-bell rang out, and Slegge turned and dashed off towards the schoolhouse as hard as he could run.
“I say, Severn,” said little Burton, turning his eyes wonderingly up at his companion, who had playfully caught him by the ear and begun leading him towards where the bell was clanging out loudly as Sam Grigg tugged at the rope, “do you think Slegge means that?”
“Oh yes. I have been talking to him about it, and I am sure he’s very sorry now.”
“Oh, I say, Severn,” cried the little fellow joyously, and with his eyes full of the admiration he felt, “what a chap you are!”
Some one who sat near took an observation that morning over the breakfast that Slegge did not seem to enjoy his bread and butter, and set it down to the butter being too salt; and though the Doctor waited for days in the anticipation that the sender of the anonymous letter would come to him to confess, he expressed himself to the masters as disappointed, for the culprit did not come, and the affair died out in the greater interest that was taken later on in the matter of the belt.
Still, somebody did go to see the Doctor, and he looked at him wonderingly, for it was not the boy he expected to see, but the very last whom he would have ventured to suspect.