Then he heard bursts of laughter from the boys, and dashed down his chalk in an agony of shame and pain. And the clock struck twelve!
The honour was lost.
The boys gathered around him after school was closed.
"It was too bad, Tip," Howard Minturn said, in a tone of honest sympathy. "You'd have had it in a minute more."
"I'd have had it if it had not been for Ellis Holbrook, and he's a mean scamp!" Tip answered, in a rage.
"Whew!" said Will Bailey; "what did Ellis do?" and Ellis turned, and proudly confronted the angry boy.
"He told me wrong just on purpose; that's what he did, and he knows it."
And Tip broke away from them, and dashed out of the room.
Howard Minturn stood aghast! That Ellis Holbrook, his best friend, and the very pink of honour among the boys, should do so mean a thing, he could not think, and yet it was hard to think that Tip had not told the truth.
"What does he mean, Ellis?" he asked at last.