or. He knew what the shouting was about before he could have sworn to
a single raucous word. But Phillida could not know, and she resumed at
once where they had left off before breakfast.

"Of course I forgive you," she whispered. "It was I began it!"

"Began what?"

"Our row yesterday."

Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it was lost on Pocket now.
"I'd forgotten all about it," he said with superfluous candour, his ear
still on the street.

"I haven't."

Her voice made him remember better. "I hope to goodness I didn't hurt
you?"

"Of course you didn't."

"But you must have thought me mad!"

There was a slight but most significant pause.

"Well, I never shall again."

"Then you did!" he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces
were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no
nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and
indignant shame on hers.

"You really are at school?" she whispered, not increduously, but as one
seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had
thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved
school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!

But at that moment Dr. Baumgartner was heard bargaining at the gate with
one raucous voice, while the other went on roaring huskily, "Park
murder--arrest! 'Rest o' de Park murderer! Park murder--Park
murder--arrest!" And Pocket sprang up from the table in a state that swept
his last thoughts clean from his mind.

The girl said something; he did not hear what. He was white and
trembling, in pitiable case even to eyes that could only see skin-deep;
but the doctor's step came beating like a drum to him, and he was solidly
seated when the doctor entered--without any paper at all.

"It's that murder the papers are all exploiting," he explained benignly.
"They were shouting out something about an arrest; you would hear them, I
daresay. But it's the usual swindle; the police are merely hoping to
effect an arrest. I threatened to send for them unless the scoundrel took
his paper back!"

He was in his lightest mood of sardonic gaiety. The sins of the vendors
recalled those of "your vermin press itself"; the association was wilfully
unfair, the favourite phrase a studied insult; but the English boy was
either dense or indifferent, and Phillida's great eyes were in some other
world. Baumgartner subjected them both to a jealous scrutiny