"Oh, my part's so simple, I can't make a mess of it. Mind you don't make a mess of yours, Freddy."
Now Harry decided, immediately on quitting Plunger, that he would acquaint Baldry with the joke that Plunger intended to play upon him. It was he who had drawn that cartoon in the Forum that had stirred Plunger to wrath, and Harry came to the conclusion that it was not right that Baldry should suffer for him. Besides, as Plunger had so often scored over him, he thought it only right that he should begin to equalize matters. So he hunted up Baldry, and informed him of Plunger's kind intentions towards him.
"Oh," said Baldry, when Harry had ended, "that's Plunger's little game, is it? I thought he was getting a bit cross, but I didn't think he meant showing his teeth. The beauty of it is, I hadn't anything to do with that portrait of him on the Forum window. I know no more about it than you do."
"Than I do!" echoed Harry, smiling to himself.
"He made a better guess when he told you that I inspired those paragraphs in the Record. I just gave a hint to Jowett. Jowett passed it on to Jessel, and Jessel put in the smart bits that touched Plunger on the raw. Plunger's all right when he's going for other people, but he doesn't like it when others go for him."
Harry quite sympathized with this view of things.
"There's my name," went on Baldry. "I can't help my name. I didn't christen myself, and was never asked whether I liked it or not. That's the worst of names. You never are consulted. It's all done for you by your ancestors, and your godfathers and godmothers—and people of that sort. I don't know why it should be, but it is; and there you are—fixed up for life with a name, unless you happen to be a girl, and get married, then you drop it for another, but it may be ever so much worse than the one you've got. Now, what I say is this—Baldry isn't such a bad name, as names go, is it, Moncrief?"
"Better than Plunger, any day," remarked Harry, in his most sympathetic manner.
"Better than Plunger, as you say, Moncrief. Where Plunger's ancestors picked up a name like that, goodness only knows. It must have come out of the Ark. And yet he's always calling me 'Baldhead,' 'Bladder of Lard,' 'The Lost Hair,' and telling me to go in for hair-restorer, Tatcho, and making feeble jokes of that sort. But I think I went one better when I got that paragraph in the Record, eh?"
"Yes, Baldry you scored there; but what we've got to think about is, how to prevent Plunger from scoring back. Some one will have to go to the Forum in answer to his invitation, when it comes. It won't matter who, because Plunger won't be able to see; he'll be up in the tree, waiting for my whistle. So who's to be the victim?"