“The Bagwig said I stole it, but that’s fudge! As though I would do such a thing! That made me as mad as fire, I can tell you! Well, I don’t mind his abusing me like a pickpocket for setting the brute on to tree two of the Nobs—it did, Ned! It was the most famous thing you ever saw in your life!”
“I dare say, but I didn’t see it.”
“No, and I wish you might have done so, for I do think you must have enjoyed it. Well, there it was, and of course I expected I should have to fork out my knocking-in money, or some such thing, and I didn’t care a fig for that. But then, as I say, the Dean would have it I had stolen the bear, in spite of my telling him that I had only borrowed it, and I fired up at last, and said I’d no need to steal bears, because if you knew I wanted one you would very likely give me one—”
“It is the last thing in the world I would give you.”
“Well, I don’t want one; I should not know what to do with it. But I dare say my saying that put him in a worse pet, for the long and the short of it is that I am rusticated for the rest of the term. But I don’t think the Bagwig was so very angry, you know, because for one thing he don’t like one of the Nobs the bear chased, and for another, I’ll go bail he had a twinkle in his eye, for I saw it. He’s a great gun!”
“Very well, and what happened next?”
“Oh, then, of course, I had to come down! Keighley drove me to London in his new phaeton. He has the prettiest pair of bays, Ned! Regular sixteen-mile-an-hour tits, and—”
“Never mind that! I want to hear the rest of this story.”
“Oh, yes! Well, from London I had to come the rest of the way on the stagecoach to Wisborough Green—”
“Why, in heaven’s name?”