“Don’t name it,” said Bobbie. “Glad I brought it back in time.”
“Good-bye, old chap,” said the officer lad, shaking hands with the boy. “I’m most fearfully glad to have met you. Can’t give you a lift, I suppose, anywhere, can I, what?”
“Thanks, fearfully,” said Bobbie. “My brougham’s waiting outside for me. Ta-ta!”
CHAPTER XIII.
Roses at Collingwood upon his return; and thorns. Thorns supplied, not by the foster-father or the foster-mother, but by the boys, who, once they had extracted full particulars of Bobbie’s adventure, made from these facts ammunition for gay badinage that, well aimed, gave them great content. In school, the game was played furtively. A slip of paper would be passed along the forms of the fourth standard class bearing the inquiry of a seeker after knowledge, “Who pinched the cornet?” this would be varied by rough sketches executed by Master Nutler of a lad running, with the words underneath, “Hold him!” When Bobbie strolled out of school at dinner time there would come an affected cry of alarm, “He’s off again!” Robert Lancaster took all of this with stolidity and in a manner differing from that which he would have exhibited a month previously. It seemed that the failure of his expedition had tamed him; certainly his stay in the hospital and at the convalescent home had given him reticence. He applied himself to his lessons. After a few weeks the other boys declined to be led any longer by Master Nutler, because there seemed little sport in rallying a man who showed no signs of annoyance, and Bobbie Lancaster presently found—excepting for an occasional reminder—that the Brenchley escapade had gone out of memory. Miss Nutler on one of the rare occasions when they met, expressed her regret at the consequences of their disagreement, hinting that, so far as she was concerned, the past could be shut out from memory.
“It was my eldest brother put me up to it,” said Miss Nutler apologetically. “You know what a one he is.”
“I do,” remarked Master Lancaster.
“I should never ’ave thought of it if it hadn’t been for him,” declared Miss Nutler. “A better hearted girl than me you wouldn’t find in a day’s march.”
“Dessay!”
“In fact,” went on the young person, waxing enthusiastic, “I’m too good-hearted for this world. I’m a fool to meself. And that’s why I gave way when he told me to pretend you’d hurt me. See?”