“Webster,” said that youth, in tones of breathless entreaty, “do let us off this once! Coote really never took the pencil, and if you have him taken up, it will be ruination! I shall get in a row for coming down now, but I couldn’t help. We’ll do anything if you don’t take Coote up. I’ll get my father to pay you what you like. Will you, please, Webster?”
The boy delivered this appeal so rapidly and earnestly that Webster had no time to stop him; but when Dick paused, he said:—
“Make yourself comfortable, Mr Richardson, I’ve found the pencil.”
Dick literally shouted, as he sprang forward and seized the bookseller’s hand:—
“Found it! Oh, what a brick you are!”
“Yes; it had fallen into that hole, and I just turned it out. Lucky for you and your friend it did. And I’m not sorry, either, for I’d no fancy for putting any of you to trouble; but I was bound to protect myself, you see.”
“Of course, of course. You’re a regular trump, Webster,” cried Dick, too delighted to feel at all critical of the way in which the bookseller was extricating himself from his dilemma. “I’m so glad; so will they be. Thanks, awfully, Webster. I say, I must get a Templeton Observer for the good of the shop.”
And he flung down a sixpence in the bigness of his heart, and taking the newspaper, darted back to Templeton in a state of jubilation and happiness, which made passers-by, as he rushed down the street, turn round and look after him.
In ten minutes Coote and Heathcote were as radiant as he; and that afternoon the Templeton “Tub” echoed with the boisterous glee of the three heroes, as they played leap-frog with one another in the water, and set the rocks almost aglow with the sunshine of their countenances.
But Nemesis is proverbially a cruel old lady. She sports with her victims like a cat with a mouse. And just when the poor scared things, having escaped one terrible swoop of her hand, take breath, she comes down remorselessly with the other hand, and dashes away hope and breath at a blow.