AN EXPLANATION.

For a few moments Dexter's idea was to go to the great gates, ring the
porter's bell, and take sanctuary there, for he felt that he had
disgraced himself utterly beyond retrieving his character. Certainly,
he never dared go back to the doctor's.

He felt for a moment that he had some excuse, for Edgar Danby had
brought his punishment upon himself; but no one would believe that, and
there was no hope for the offender but to give up everything, and go
back to his former life.

But, as the boy reached the gloomy-looking workhouse entrance, and saw
the painted bell-pull, through whose coating the rust was eating its
way, he shivered.

For there rose up before him the stern faces of Mr Hippetts and Mr
Sibery, with the jeering crowd of schoolfellows, who could laugh at and
gibe him for his downfall, and be sure to call him Gentleman Coleby, as
long as they were together, the name, under the circumstances, being
sure to stick.

No, he could not face them there, and beside, though it had never seemed
so before, the aspect of the great building was so forbidding that he
shrank away, and walked onward toward the outskirts of the town, and on,
and on, till he found himself by the river.

Such a sensation of misery and despair came over him, that he began
walking along by the bank, seeing nothing of the glancing fish and
bright insects which danced above the water. He had room for nothing
but the despondent thoughts of what he should do now.

"What would the doctor think of him? What would Helen say?" He had
been asked out to spend the day at a gentleman's house, and he had
disgraced himself, and--

"Hullo!"

Dexter looked up sharply, and found that he had almost run against his
old fishing friend of the opposite side of the river.

"Hullo!" stammered Dexter in reply.

"Got dry again?" said the boy, who was standing just back from the
water's edge, fishing, with his basket at his side, and a box of baits
on the grass.

"Got dry?" said Dexter wonderingly.

"Yes! My!" cried the boy, grinning, "you did have a ducking. I ran
away. Best thing I could do."

"Yes," said Dexter quietly; "you ran away."

"Why, what yer been a-doing of? Your face is scratched, and your hands
too. I know: you've been climbing trees. You'll ketch it, spoiling
your clothes. That's got him."

He struck and landed a small fish, which he took from the hook and
dropped into his basket, where there were two more.