“Lest you find a hole in your pocket, here is a sixpence for you,” cried the right-hand passenger, tossing him his own sixpence. “Thank you for teaching us the secret of such a curious pocket.”
The coachman was impatient, got his money, and drove off, leaving Hugh to make out why he had been tickled, and how his money had changed hands. With a very red face, he declared it was too bad of the man: but the man was out of his hearing, and could never know how angry he was.
“A pretty story this is for our usher to have against you, to begin with,” was Phil’s consolation. “Every boy will know it before you show yourself; and you will never hear the last of it, I can tell you.”
“Your usher!” exclaimed Hugh, bewildered.
“Yes, our usher. That was he on the box, beside coachee. Did not you find out that much in all these eight-and-twenty miles?”
“How should I? He never told me.”
Hugh could hardly speak to his uncle and aunt, he was so taken up with trying to remember what he had said, in the usher’s hearing, of the usher himself, and everybody at Crofton.