the front at last, my boy!"

"Why, are _you_ to be the new captain?" asked Coates, with a slight
sneer.

Tipper was not pleased with this little piece of sarcasm. He was a good
cricketer and a fine runner, but in school everybody knew him to be as
poor a scholar as a fellow could be to be in the sixth at all.

"I dare say even I would be as good as any schoolhouse fellow you could
pick out," said he. "But if you want to know, Bloomfield's the man."

"Just what I was saying," said Ashley. "But Coates says he's not far
enough up in the school."

"All bosh," said Tipper. "What difference does it make if a fellow's
first or twentieth in the school, as long as he's cock of everything
outside! I don't see how the doctor can hesitate a moment between the
two."

This was the conclusion come to at almost all the conclaves which met
together during the day to discuss the burning question. It was the
conclusion moreover to which Bloomfield himself came as he talked the
matter over with a few of his friends after third school.

"You see," said he, "it's not that I care about the thing for its own
sake. It would be a precious grind, I know, to have to be responsible
for everything that goes on, and to have to lick all the kids that want
a hiding. But for all that, I'd sooner do it than let the school run
down."

"What I hope," said some one, "is that even if Paddy doesn't see it
himself, Riddell will, and will have the sense to back out of it. I
fancy he wouldn't be sorry."

"Not he," said Bloomfield. "I heard him say once he pitied Wyndham all
the bother he had, especially when he was wanting to stew for the
exams."

"Has any one seen Riddell lately?" asked Game. "It wouldn't be a bad
thing for some of us to see him, and put it to him, that the school
would go to the dogs to a dead certainty if he was captain."

"Rather a blunt way of putting it," said Porter, laughing. "I'd break
it to him rather more gently than that."

"Well, you know what I mean," replied Game, who was of the downright
order.

"You see," said Bloomfield, who, despite his protestations, was
evidently not displeased at the notion of his possible honours, "I don't
profess to be much of a swell in school; but--I don't know--I fancy I
could keep order rather better than he could. The fellows know me."

"They ought to, if they don't," said Wibberly, who was a toady.

"Fancy Riddell having to lick a junior," said Game. "Why he'd faint