“Let them think!” shouted Oliver, in a voice so loud and angry that Master Paul came to the door and asked what he wanted.
“What do I care what they think?” continued Oliver, forgetting all about his temper; “they can think what they like, but they had better let me alone. I’d like to knock all their heads together! so I would!”
“Steady, old man!” said Wraysford, good-humouredly; “I quite agree with you. But I say, Noll, I think it’s a pity you don’t put yourself right with them and the school generally, somehow. Everybody heard Loman call you a fool yesterday, and you know our fellows are so clannish that they think, for the credit of the Fifth, something ought to be done.”
“Let them send Braddy to thrash him, then; I don’t intend to fight to please them!”
“Oh! that’s all right. And if they all knew what you’ve told me they would understand it; but as it is, they don’t.”
“They’ll find out some day, most likely,” growled Oliver; “I’m not going to bother any more about it. I say, Wray, do you know anything of Cripps’s son?”
“Yes. Don’t you know he keeps a dirty public-house in Maltby?—a regular cad, they say. The fishing-fellows have seen him up at the Weir now and then.”
“I don’t know how he came across him, but my young brother has just been buying a bat from him, and I don’t much fancy it.”
“No, the youngster won’t get any good with that fellow; you had better tell him,” said Wraysford.
“So I have, and he won’t do it again.”