“Ah, I was wondering what that meant,” said Dick. “He speaks as if you’d been blabbing all sorts of things.”
“I really don’t think I ever did,” said Heathcote, ransacking his memory. “I may have said once I thought Coote was rather an ass, but that was all.”
“What made you tell him that?” said Coote.
“He asked me if I didn’t think so,” said Georgie, apologetically, “and of course I was bound to say what I thought.”
“Rather,” said Coote.
“But he’s telling crams about you, Dick,” said Georgie; “I’m quite sure of that. He used to try and make out you were a sneak and a prig; and perhaps I believed him once or twice, but that was while I was a cad, you know.”
“Oh, yes, that’s all right!” said Dick, putting his arm in that of his friend.
Pledge would have had very little consolation out of this short discussion, and if for the next two days he sat up in his study expecting that every footstep belonged to the “Firm” on its way to capitulate, he must have been sorely disappointed. Capitulation was the one consideration which had never once entered the heads of the honest fraternity.
That afternoon the town of Templeton was startled by an incident, which had it come to the ears of our heroes, as they sat and groaned over their “Select Dialogues of the Dead,” would have effectually driven every letter of the Greek alphabet out of their heads for the time being.
The event was nothing else but the arrival in port of the collier brig, Hail! Columbia with a cargo of coals from the Tyne, and mirabile dictu! with the Martha lying comfortably, bottom upwards, safe and sound, on her deck.