“There, I know all about it. Pay him off, and never get into such a hobble again”—puff. “Coming, my dear!”—puff.
Mrs Draycott, an exceedingly thin lady, was calling from the French window of the drawing-room, and the “Heavy Coach,” as his pupils nicknamed him, went puffing off up to the house.
“Oh, I can’t stand this!” said Richard to himself. “I must have a thorough explanation. Mark shall speak out. Why, Draycott believes it, too! That scoundrelly little tailor must have told him. Hi! Dillon, seen my cousin?”
This was to a fellow-pupil, who was coming down the garden.
“Five minutes—ten minutes—ago, going across the Close. Gone to see the river; it’s getting flooded. What’s the row?”
“Oh, nothing—nothing.”
“But you look as if you were going to knock his head off.”
“I am,” cried Richard, over his shoulder, as he hurried off.
“That’s right. Hit hard! Save me a lock of his hair!” shouted the youth; and then to himself: “Serve the beast right! What’s he been doing now?”
Richard Frayne met a couple more of the “Heavy Coach’s” pupils as he crossed the Cathedral Close, where the calm silence of the old place ought to have quelled the angry throbbing in his veins; but it had an opposite effect, and the cries of the jackdaws which clung about the mouldering tower sounded like impish derisive laughter.