"So do I—the mean Scab! And he's pinched your bicycle."
"No fear! You bet we'll find it round the corner. He wouldn't have the spunk to go right off with it. But look here—what I mean is"—hesitant, yet resolute, he harked back to the main point—"if any of that lot came to know—about India and—your mother, well—they're proper skunks, some of them. They might say things that would make you feel like a kettle on the boil."
"If they did—I would kill them."
Roy stated the fact with quiet deliberation, and without noticing that he had repeated the very words of the vanished victim.
This time Desmond did not treat it as a joke.
"'Course you would," he agreed gravely. "And that sort of shindy's no good for the school. So I thought—better give you the tip——"
"I—see," Roy said in a low voice, without looking up. He did not see; but he began dimly to guess at a so far unknown and unsuspected state of mind.
Desmond sat silent while he shook the sand out of his boots. Then he remarked in an easier tone: "Quite sure there's no damage?"
Roy, now on his feet, found his left leg uncomfortably stiff—and said so.
"Bad luck! We must walk it off. I'll knead it first, if you like. I've seen them do it on the Border."