Baltimore tried to bite, then he said, “I’ll tell Thompson.”
“I don’t care if you do,” said Jeremy.
Yes, he felt a strange wild pleasure, but when that afternoon old Thompson genially said:
“Well, Cole, I think Baltimore’s found his feet now all right, hasn’t he?”
Jeremy said: “Yes, sir; he has.”
He felt miserable. He sat down and kicked the turf furiously with his toes. He had lost something, he knew not what; something very precious. . . .
Someone called him, and he went off to join in a rag. Anyway, “Tom Brown” was a rotten book.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RUFFIANS
I
Jeremy sat on a high cliff overlooking the sea. He had never, since he was a tiny baby, had any fear of heights, and now his short, thick legs dangled over a fearful abyss in a way that would have caused his mother’s heart to go faint with terror had she seen it.