the tea, "and they'll be more
careful."

"Will they?" said the doctor emphatically. "You see if the young
varlets are not in trouble before the week's out, sir."

"Let's hope not," said my father. "Come, boys, help yourselves to the
ham and eggs."

"Come, boys, help yourselves to the ham and eggs!" said Bob Chowne to
me, as soon as we were alone. "Who's to help himself to ham and eggs
when he's having the suit of clothes he lost banged about his
unfortunate head? It regularly spoiled my tea."

"Why, Bob," I cried, "you had three big cups, six pieces of bread and
butter, two slices of ham, three eggs, a piece of cake, and some cream."

"There's a sneak--there's a way to treat a fellow!" he cried, growing
spiky all over, and snorting with annoyance. "Ask a poor chap to tea,
and then count his mouthfuls. Well, that is mean."

"Why, I only said so because you declared you had had a bad tea."

"So I did--miserable," he retorted. "I seemed to see myself again
sitting at home in those old worn-out clothes, and afraid to go out at
any other time but night, when no one was looking."

"Now, Bob: where are you?" cried his father. "I'll take him off at
once, Duncan, or he'll eat you out of house and home."

"Hear that?" cried Bob, "hear that? Pretty way to talk of a fellow,
isn't it. I don't wonder everybody hates me. I'm about the most
miserable chap that ever was."

"Not you, Bob. Come over to-morrow."

"What for?"

"Oh, I don't know. We'll go rabbiting or something."

"Now, Bob!" came from the doctor.

"Here, I must go. Good-bye. I'll come if I can. I wish I was you, or
old Bigley, or somebody else."

"Or back at school," I said laughing.

"Yes, or back at school," he said quite seriously; and then his arm was
grasped by his father.

"Just as if I was a patient," he grumbled to me next day. "Father don't
like me. He only thinks I am a nuisance, and he's glad when I'm going
back to school. I shall run off to Bristol some day and go to sea,
that's what I shall do."

But that was the next day. That evening I stood with my father at the
gate till Bob and his father were out of sight in the lane, and then we
went back into the parlour, where my father lit his pipe and sat smoking
and gazing at me.

"Well, Sep," he said after a pause, "don't you want to know how the mine
is getting on?"

"Yes, father," I said; "but I didn't like to ask."

"Well, I'll tell you without, my boy. I've not g