“And now you’ll come back with me, Ned. The box will take no harm here till we send for it.”
“Go back with you! that I never will. Fare you well, Johnny: I’ll wish it to you.”
“But where are you going?”
“That’s my business. Look here; I was more generous than some of you have been. All along, I felt as sure who it was, cribbing those things at school, as though I had seen it done; but I never told. I just whispered to the fellow, when we were parting: ‘Don’t you go in for the same game next half, or I shall have you dropped upon;’ and I don’t think he will.”
“Who—which was it?” I cried, eagerly.
“No: give him a chance. It was neither you nor me, and that’s enough to know.”
Hoisting the box up on to the projecting edge of a tree, he got it on his shoulders again. Certain of his innocence then, I was in an agony to get him back.
“It’s of no use, Johnny. Good-bye.”
“Sanker! Ned! The Squire will be fit to smother us all, when he finds you are off; Mrs. Todhetley is in dreadful grief. Such an unpleasant thing has never before happened with us.”