“Mind you, I mean what I say. I shall bring the charge against you, and I have the proofs.”
“Bring it, I say!” fiercely repeated Gerald. “Who cares for your bringings? Mind your bones afterwards, that’s all!”
He pushed Bywater from him with a haughty gesture, and raced home to breakfast, hoping there would be something good to assuage his hunger.
But Bywater was not to be turned from his determination. Never a boy in the school less likely than he. He went home to his breakfast, and returned to school to have his name inscribed on the roll, and then went into college with the other nine choristers, and took his part in the service. And the bottle, I say, was burning a hole in his pocket. The Reverend William Yorke was chanting, and Arthur Channing sat at the organ. Would the Very Reverend the Dean of Helstonleigh, standing in his stall so serenely placid, his cap resting on the cushion beside him, ever again intimate a doubt that Arthur was not worthy to take part in the service? But the dean did not know the news yet.
Back in the school-room, Bywater lost no time. He presented himself before the master, and entered upon his complaint, schoolboy fashion.
“Please, sir, I think I have found out who inked my surplice.”
The master had allowed the occurrence to slip partially from his memory. At any rate, it was some time since he had called it up. “Oh, indeed!” said he somewhat cynically, to Bywater, after a pause given to revolving the circumstances. “Think you have found out the boy, do you?”
“Yes, sir; I am pretty sure of it. I think it was Gerald Yorke.”
“Gerald Yorke! One of the seniors!” repeated the master, casting a penetrating gaze upon Bywater.
The fact was, Mr. Pye, at the time of the occurrence, had been somewhat inclined to a secret belief that the real culprit was Bywater himself. Knowing that gentleman’s propensity to mischief, knowing that the destruction of a few surplices, more or less, would be only fun to him, he had felt an unpleasant doubt upon the point. “Did you do it yourself?” he now plainly asked of Bywater.