ng to Mr. Sharman's private house, which adjoined the
school, flew open, and John Brown's name was sharply called. It entered
into Arthur Smedley's mind to see what writing remained upon the wall,
and he went across to the cloak-room for that purpose.

Whereupon Cyril looked to the right of him, to the left of him, to the
back of him, and beheld neither friend nor foe in his vicinity; and he
heaved a sigh of great satisfaction, ran to the fence, squeezed himself
through a hole in it, and was upon the road towards home in a trice.

But before he had gone more than a hundred yards he heard quick
footsteps behind him, and looking over his shoulder he saw John C.
Brown. Then did a sickening sense of terror sweep over him, and his
heart leapt into his mouth, for had he not said John Carew-Brown was
"only the gardener's boy"?

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIGHT

Betty was in the belt of bush that lay between the wicket-gate of her
home and the road. Her idea was to be sufficiently near to home to
gather from the sound of the voices that might call her if she were
_really_ needed and yet to be so far from sight that the continual
"Betty, come here," and "Betty, go there," could not be.

She had come home as soon as school was out, come home leaving Cyril and
Nancy behind her, flung herself beneath the shade of one of her
favourite old gum trees, and begun to write.

When Mr. Bruce was busy over a story, or an article, or a book, every
one in the house knew. Then the study door would be closed and the
window only opened at the top; then the children would be banished from
the side garden into which the study looked, and from the passage
outside the study door; then Mrs. Bruce would carry his meals to him
upon a tray, and he would have strong black coffee in the early evening.
And then at last a neatly folded missive, gummed and tied with thin
string, with a mysterious "_MS. only_" inscribed in one corner, would be
carried to the post by either Cyril or Betty.

When Dot wrote a story, as she very frequently did now-a-days, portions
of it would be carried into the study for her father to see, and her
mother would proudly read page after page of the neat round hand, and
wonder where on earth the child got her ideas from.

But when Betty wrote her stories, no one in the house--excepting Cyril,
of course--knew anything about it! no one kept the house quiet for
Betty, and no one wondered wherever she got her ideas from. And ye