t.

'Look at me, sir,' cried Boddy.

'I prefer to look elsewhere, sir,' replied Heriot, and there was Julia
visible at her window.

'I asked you, sir, civilly,' quoth Boddy, 'for permission to look,--I
used the word intentionally; I say I asked you for permission . . .'

'No, you didn't,' Heriot retorted, quite cool; 'inferentially you did;
but you did not use the word permission.'

'And you turned upon me impudently,' pursued Boddy, whose colour was
thunder: 'you quibbled, sir; you prevaricated; you concealed what you
were carrying . . .'

'Am carrying,' Heriot corrected his tense; 'and mean to, in spite of
every Boddy,' he murmured audibly.

'Like a rascal detected in an act of felony,' roared Boddy, 'you
concealed it, sir . . .'

'Conceal it, sir.'

'And I demand, in obedience to my duty, that you instantly exhibit it for
my inspection, now, here, at once; no parleying; unbutton, or I call Mr.
Rippenger to compel you.'

I was standing close by my brave Heriot, rather trembling, studious of
his manfulness though I was. His left foot was firmly in advance, as he
said, just in the manner to start an usher furious:

'I concealed it, I conceal it; I was carrying it, I carry it: you demand
that I exhibit for your inspection what I mean no Boddy to see? I have to
assure you respectfully, sir, that family portraits are sacred things
with the sons of gentlemen. Here, Richie, off!'

I found the portrait in my hand, and Heriot between me and the usher, in
the attitude of a fellow keeping another out of his home at
prisoner's-base. He had spied Mr. Rippenger's head at the playground
gate. I had just time to see Heriot and the usher in collision before I
ran through the gate and into Julia's arms in her garden, whither the
dreadful prospect of an approaching catastrophe had attracted her.

Heriot was merely reported guilty of insolence. He took his five hundred
lines of Virgil with his usual sarcastic dignity: all he said to Mr.
Rippenger was, 'Let it be about Dido, sir,' which set several of the boys
upon Dido's history, but Heriot was condemned to the battles with Turnus.
My share in this event secured Heriot's friendship to me without costing
me the slightest inconvenience. 'Papa would never punish you,' Julia
said; and I felt my rank. Nor was it wonderful I should when Mr.
Rippenger was constantly speaking of my father's magnificence in my
presence before company. Allowed to draw on him largely for pocket-mone