"Hullo!" cried Jack Vance; "what's up? You look as if you had lost a sovereign and found sixpence!"
"Matter enough," murmured Mugford, whose heart was evidently in his mouth: "I'm going to leave."
"Going to leave!" exclaimed Diggory; "what ever d'you mean?"
"Well, I don't mind telling you fellows," answered the other. "You know my guv'nor isn't well off, and he says he's lost money, and can't afford to keep me at Ronleigh. I know I'm no good, and you fellows'll get on all right without me, and—"
The sentence not being completed, the two other boys glanced at the speaker's face, and from previous indications in the tone of his voice were not surprised to find that he was crying. Two years appear a long time when one is on the bright side of twenty, and the friendship seemed to have lasted for ages. At the near prospect of separation all Mugford's little failings were forgotten, and both Diggory and Jack Vance felt that life without him would be a blank.
"Oh, dash it all!" said the latter; "you mustn't go? Isn't there anything we can do? Shall I write to your guv'nor?"
The idea of Jack Vance addressing a remonstrance to his respected parent caused the ghost of a smile to appear on Mugford's doleful face.
"No, it's no good," he answered. "There's nothing for it; I shall have to leave."
During the interval which divided morning school and the free time before dinner the three friends mooned about together, trying in vain to regard the future in a more cheerful light, and to make plans for keeping touch of each other by an interchange of letters and a possible meeting in the holidays.
"It's all very well," said Jack Vance to Diggory, when late on in the afternoon he happened to come across the latter flattening his nose against the glass of the box-room window—"it's all very well talking about writing and all that; but this is the end of the Triple Alliance."