He threw himself back in his chair in sheer misery. “I would sooner have done the thing myself,” groaned he to himself, “than Oliver.” Then suddenly he added, “But it’s not true! I’m certain of it! He couldn’t do it! I’ll never believe it of him!”
Poor Wraysford! It was easier to say the generous words than feel them.
Pembury looked in presently with a face far more serious and overcast than he usually wore.
“I say, Wray,” said he, in troubled tones, “I’m regularly floored by all this. Do you believe it?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Wraysford, but so sadly and hesitatingly that had he at once confessed he did, he could not have expressed his meaning more plainly.
“I’d give anything to be sure it was all false,” said Pembury, “and so would a lot of the fellows. As for that fool Simon—”
“Bah!” exclaimed Wraysford, fiercely, “the fellow ought to be kicked round the school.”
“He’s getting on that way already, I fancy,” said Pembury. “I was saying I’d think nothing at all about it if what he says was the only thing to go by, but—well, you saw what a state Greenfield got into about it?”
“Maybe he was just in a sudden rage with the fellow for thinking of such a thing,” said Wraysford.
“It looked like something more than rage,” said Pembury, dismally, “something a good deal more.”