"What good will staring with your mouth open do!" exclaimed Edward
Anderson, the eldest present. "Here! a bit of blotting-paper this
moment!"

Tom, dreadfully frightened, handed a sheet torn from an old paper-case
that he had inherited from Harry, saying despairingly, "It won't take it
out, will it?"

"No, little stupid head, but don't you see, I'm stopping it from running
down the edges, or soaking in. He won't be the wiser till he opens it
again at that place."

"When he does, he will," said the bewildered Tom.

"Let him. It won't tell tales."

"He's coming!" cried another boy, "he is close at the door."

Anderson hastily shut the book over the blotting-paper, which he did not
venture to retain in his hand, dragged Tom down from the desk, and
was apparently entirely occupied with arranging his own box, when Mr.
Harrison came in. Tom crouched behind the raised lid, quaking in every
limb, conscious he ought to confess, but destitute of resolution to do
so, and, in a perfect agony as the master went to his desk, took up the
book, and carried it away, so unconscious, that Larkins, a great wag,
only waited till his back was turned, to exclaim, "Ha! old fellow, you
don't know what you've got there!"

"Hallo! May junior, will you never leave off staring? you won't see a
bit farther for it," said Edward Anderson, shaking him by the ear; "come
to your senses, and know your friends."

"He'll open it!" gasped Tom.

"So he will, but I'd bet ninety to one, it is not at that page, or if
he does, it won't tell tales, unless, indeed, he happened to see you
standing there, crouching and shaking. That's the right way to bring him
upon you."

"But suppose he opens it, and knows who was in school?"

"What then? D'ye think we can't stand by each other, and keep our own
counsel?"

"But the blotting-paper--suppose he knows that!"

There was a laugh all round at this, "as if Harrison knew everyone's
blotting-paper!"

"Yes, but Harry used to write his name all over his--see--and draw Union
Jacks on it."

"If he did, the date is not there. Do you think the ink is going to say
March 2nd? Why should not July have done it last half?"

"July would have told if he had," said Larkins. "That's no go."

"Ay! That's the way--the Mays are all like girls--can't keep a
secret--not one of them. There, I've done more for you than ever one of
them would have done--own it--and he strode up to Tom, and grasped his
wrists, to force the