"I...." said Merrett.
"D'you know...." said Ruthven.
Chadwick's face was a delicate green.
"I believe," said Dunstable, "the stuff ... was ... poisoned. I...."
"Drink this," said the school doctor, briskly, bending over Dunstable's bed with a medicine-glass in his hand, "and be ashamed of yourself. The fact is you've over-eaten yourself. Nothing more and nothing less. Why can't you boys be content to feed moderately?"
"I don't think I ate much, sir," protested Dunstable. "It must have been what I ate. I went to that new American place."
"So you went there, too? Why, I've just come from attending a bilious boy in Mr. Seymour's house. He said he had been at the American place, too."
"Was that Merrett, sir? He was one of the party. We were all bad. We can't all have eaten too much."
The doctor looked thoughtful.