They were not tempted from grace, either, by the red-rag irritation of Peter Mawdster's presence. That sick and sorry youth took advantage of the holiday to slip down home, and, for some reason never publicly explained, he was seen at Foxenby no more. Possibly his doting parents decided to remove him to a less robust and more genteel atmosphere than that which Foxenby afforded. Anyhow, his disappearance had no more effect on the school than the swift death of a midge in a summer thunderstorm.
Dick took his fifty-pound cheque to the head-master's bank and withdrew thirty-five pounds of it, leaving the remainder on deposit in his own name. Then he hunted up "Chuck" Smithies, who was amusing himself by turning over a portfolio of old sporting prints.
"Hallo, sonny! Come to tell me how you ticked off that jelly-fish, Aaron Mawdster, yesterday afternoon? I can see by your face that you wrung the low-down animal's withers for him!"
"Thanks to you, I metaphorically mopped him up," said Dick.
The bookmaker roared with laughter over Dick's unvarnished account of the printing-office interview, in which the captain had seen nothing particularly funny at the time.
"You rattled the hypocrite's teeth with a rasping upper-cut there, lad," said Smithies. "Oh, I'll laugh till I cry! Threatening to expose him as a blackmailer got right through his sanctimonious guard. He'd dread that. You could have bowled him out with it, whether you'd paid him or not."
"I paid him, though. He took all you lent me and some odd shillings besides."
"Exactly what he would do, the dirty blighter! But here, I say, what are you trying on, youngster? Repaying me already?" He stared almost resentfully at the thirty-five pounds which Dick laid before him. "Been picking paper-money off trees, kid, or what is it? Pardon me if I seem dazed, but——"
"Please take it, Smithies. I'd the luck of a lifetime yesterday." Briefly Dick described his moonlit trip to the hills with Fluffy Jim, and what came of it. "So, you see, I can repay your kind loan with a balance in hand."
What seemed distinctly like a shade of annoyance crossed the bookmaker's face. "Sonny, we parted on good terms yesterday—don't strew tacks under the wheel of friendship to-day. Am I Shylock, that you should plunk down a fiver for a day's interest on thirty pounds? I'll take back what I lent you and not a penny more."