ll?"

"You're not going to give him anything nasty, are you?"

"Yes."

"Oh!"

"You wait and see!"

"But you mustn't; it wouldn't do."

"Wouldn't it? Ah, just you wait. We'll make 'em sorry for this."

"I'm not going to do anything nasty," I said sturdily.

"Yes, you are; you're going to do as I do. We're mates, and you've got
to help me as I helped you."

I thought of the pot marked "poison;" of Dicksee being bad through
taking something Mercer had given him; and a curious sensation of
sickness came over me, and I left half my pudding, just as Mercer took
up his fork, chopped his disk up into eight pieces, and began to bolt
them fiercely.

"Eat your pudding," he said, noticing that I had left off.

"Can't. I've had enough."

"You must. I want you to grow strong. I shall give you some tonic
stuff my father prescribes for people."

I looked at him in horror, but he was glaring at the last piece of
pudding on his fork.

"Just you wait!" he said gloomily.

"I will not help him in anything I think wrong," I said to myself; and a
few minutes after, Mercer leaned towards me.

"Look!" he whispered; "there's Eely Burr and Fathead grinning at us.
Wait a bit! They don't know what a horrible revenge we're going to have
on them."

"But if it's _we_," I said, "you ought to tell me what the revenge is
going to be."

"I'll tell you some time," he whispered. "Perhaps to-morrow, perhaps
to-night.--You wait!"

"Oh, how I do hate being treated like that!" I thought to myself, and I
was about to beg of him to tell me then, and to try to persuade him not
to, do anything foolish, when the Doctor tapped the table with the
handle of his cheese-knife, grace was said, and we all adjourned to the
play-field for the half-hour at our disposal before we resumed our
studies.

I had no further opportunity for speaking to Mercer that afternoon, for,
when we returned to the schoolroom, the Doctor made us a speech, in
which he said he, "regretted deeply to find."--Here he stopped to blow
his nose, and I turned hot, cold, and then wet, as I felt that we two
would be publicly reproved and perhaps punished for fighting.

"That," continued the Doctor, "many of the boys had been going back in
minor subjects."

I breathed more freely at this.

Mr Hasnip, whom he now publicly presented to us, was an Oxford
gentleman, who would take our weak points in hand, strengthen them, and
help him, the Doctor, to maintain the high p