Away ran Digby and Julian. The boys were in the playground, so Digby at once took his old friend there to introduce him. He was resolved to give him the chance of a good start; so he took him up only to the best fellows, intending to warn him of the characters of the others. This ought to have been a very great advantage to Julian.
Farnham, Ranger, Newland, received him, for Digby’s sake, very kindly and cordially; and even Bouverie showed that he wished to be civil to him, and did not address him in the bantering way in which big fellows are apt to speak to those younger than themselves.
Julian, however, took it into his head that all this was owing to his own merits, and was not proportionably grateful to Digby. Although warned by Digby, from the first, of the characters of Spiller, Johnny Bray, Scarborough, and others, he at once showed that he had a hankering to become acquainted with them. Spiller, consequent, very soon got round him, and became the possessor of various articles in his box, as well as of some slices of his cake, and a pot or two of jam. Scarborough was not long in falling foul of him.
Digby was about to rush to his rescue, and calling on Ranger and Farnham to assist; when what was his surprise to hear Julian say—
“Please don’t hit me, Scarborough, and I will give you a pot of jam and some marmalade, and will send home for some more, if you want it.”
“Well, hand out the grub, young one, and I will let you off this time,” answered the bully. “Remember, though, I won’t stand any nonsense. You’ve promised to get me what I want, and I intend to keep you up to your word.”
Julian sneaked off to his play-box, to get the eatables; and Digby turned away with disgust.
“The idea of buying off a thrashing from a big bully,” he exclaimed, stamping with his feet in very vexation. “It is a thoroughly un-English, cowardly proceeding. Besides, it will only make the bully attack him more readily when he wants anything out of him. As he looks upon him as my friend, he wants to revenge himself on him, as he dares not attack me again while Bouverie remains.”
Boys at school very soon find their own level. Julian rapidly sunk to his. He would have had a better chance of retaining the friendship of Farnham, Ranger, and the good set, had he been sent to sleep in their room; but, unfortunately, there was no vacant bed there, and he, consequently, was put into a room with Spiller, and some of the worst fellows. All the advantage, therefore, which he gained in the day, from associating with Digby and his friends, was undone in the evening by the loose conversation of his bedroom companions.
“I wanted to have had a jolly feast, such as you had, Digby, the fellows tell me, and which, it seems, gained you so many first-rate friends,” said Julian, one day soon after his arrival, in a melancholy tone. “But do you know, what with that brute, Scarborough, and that sneaky chap, Spiller, and a host of others, I haven’t got a single thing left. I don’t think you benefited much by me, either.”