"Pooh!" said Scaife, contemptuously. "I thought you had brains, Verney." He glanced at him keenly. "Now, speak out. What's in that head of yours? You can be cheeky, if you like."
John wondered how Scaife had divined that he wished to be cheeky. His mentor had said so much to Fluff and him about the propriety of not putting on "lift" or "side" in the presence of an older boy, that he had choked back a retort which occurred to him.
"You're thinking," continued the Demon, in his clear voice, "that I didn't use my brains just now, but, my blooming innocent, I can assure you I did. Very much so. I played 'possum. Put that into your little pipe and smoke it."
At four-o'clock Bill, John noticed Cæsar's absence: a fact accounted for by the presence of a mail-phaeton, which, he knew, belonged to Mr. Desmond, drawn up—oddly enough—opposite the Manor. What a joke to think that Cæsar was drinking tea with Dirty Dick!
After Bill, having nothing better to do, John and Fluff went for a walk on the Sudbury road. They had played football before Bill, and each had realized his own awkwardness and insignificance. Poor Fluff, almost reduced to tears, with a big black bruise upon his white forehead, confessed that he preferred peaceful games—like croquet, and intended to apply for a doctor's certificate of exemption. Demanding sympathy, he received a slating.
"I play nearly as rotten a game as you do, Fluff," John said; "but Scaife expects us to be Torpids,[12] so we jolly well have to buck up. That bruise over your eye has taken off your painted-doll look. Now, if you're going to blub, you'd better get behind that hedge."
Fluff exploded.
"This is a beastly hole," he cried. "And I loathe it. I'm going to write to my father and beg him to take me away."
"You ought to be at a girls' school."
"I hate everything and everybody. I thought you were my friend, the only friend I had."