nstant Sheen hesitated. He had rehearsed this kind of scene in
his mind, and sometimes he saw himself playing a genial, forgiving,
let's-say-no-more-about-it-we-all-make-mistakes-but-in-future! role,
sometimes being cold haughty, and distant, and repelling friendly
advances with icy disdain. If anybody but Linton had been the first to
congratulate him he might have decided on this second line of action.
But he liked Linton, and wanted to be friendly with him.

"Thanks," he said.

Linton sat down on the table and burst into a torrent of speech.

"You _are_ a man! What did you want to do it for? Where the
dickens did you learn to box? And why on earth, if you can win silver
medals at Aldershot, didn't you box for the house and smash up that
sidey ass Stanning? I say, look here, I suppose we haven't been making
idiots of ourselves all the time, have we?"

"I shouldn't wonder," said Sheen. "How?"

"I mean, you did--What I mean to say is--Oh, hang it, _you_ know!
You did cut off when we had that row in the town, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Sheen, "I did."

With that medal in his pocket it cost him no effort to make the
confession.

"I'm glad of that. I mean, I'm glad we haven't been such fools as we
might have been. You see, we only had Stanning's word to go on."

Sheen started.

"Stanning!" he said. "What do you mean?"

"He was the chap who started the story. Didn't you know? He told
everybody."

"I thought it was Drummond," said Sheen blankly. "You remember meeting
me outside his study the day after? I thought he told you then."

"Drummond! Not a bit of it. He swore you hadn't been with him at all.
He was as sick as anything when I said I thought I'd seen you with
him."

"I--" Sheen stopped. "I wish I'd known," he concluded. Then, after a
pause, "So it was Stanning!"

"Yes,--conceited beast. Oh. I say."

"Um?"

"I see it all now. Joe Bevan taught you to box."

"Yes."

"Then that's how you came to be at the 'Blue Boar' that day. He's the
Bevan who runs it."

"That's his brother. He's got a gymnasium up at the top. I used to go
there every day."

"But I say, Great Scott, what are you going to do about that?"

"How do you mean?"

"Why, Spence is sure to ask you who taught you to box. He must know you
didn't learn with the instructor. Then it'll all come out, and you'll
get dropped on for going up the river and going to the pub."

"Perhaps he won't ask," said Sheen.

"Hope not. Oh, by the way--