we are
all going to cackle to him like a set of hens. I mean to take that
fellow out of Coventry after this. Come on, let us both walk home with
him a bit, and see how the cock likes that. There's Howard just ahead;
let's catch him.'

But instead of quickening his pace Leonard looked timorously back; and
there was Taylor with a group of lads round him vigorously declaiming
against the County Council for sending one of their scholarship boys
to Torrington's. So Leonard felt afraid to join this unpopular
scholar, and set himself in defiance of the present wave of anger that
was passing over his friends, and he turned down a by-road and walked
home by himself.

CHAPTER IV.

DR. MORRISON.

Leonard Morrison found himself sent to Coventry, not by his
schoolfellows, but by his sister. It was just the punishment he had
decided she deserved for daring to have an opinion of her own that
differed from his, and so to find himself 'hoist with his own petard'
made him very angry.

'Where is Flo going to do her lessons to-night?' he asked his mother,
when he went to the study and found it in darkness. His sister usually
lighted the lamp ready for him, but his mother had come with him to do
it to-night.

'She has gone to her own room--she wants to be quiet, she says. You
should not talk so much, Lenny dear,' added the lady.

'Nasty little thing! She has been telling tales, I suppose?'

'She did not say what you had been talking about, if that is what you
mean,' said Mrs. Morrison, 'but your father heard a great deal of
chatter, he says.'

'So Flo has taken herself off,' said Leonard, as he took his seat and
opened his school satchel. 'A nice time I shall have, if Taylor keeps
his word and sends me to Coventry at school! I shall lose the use of
my tongue in about a week, if nobody will speak to me. It's a lively
look-out, any way, and what have I done to deserve it, I should like
to know?'

Leonard considered himself a very ill-used individual just then, and
he was specially angry with his sister because she had so neatly
turned the tables upon him in leaving him to do his lessons alone.

He missed her sadly as the time went on, and there was no one to
grumble at or ask advice from. What to do about speaking to his father
he did not know, and at last he decided to say something to his mother
about the matter; not that he meant to tell her all, but he would just
ask her if she thought Taylor was right in his state