Mrs. Hardy shook an impressive forefinger at the boy.

‘You will say nothing to anybody of our intentions, Richard.’

‘No,’ said Dick simply; but that word given to Mrs. Hardy was a sacred oath, steel-bound and clamped.

CHAPTER VI.

The school-ground next morning at nine o’clock showed little of its usual activity.  Most of the boys were gathered near Sam Brierly’s Gothic portico, now in unpicturesque ruins and hanging limply to the school front like an excrescence.  Here Richard Haddon and Edward McKnight were standing in attitudes of extreme unconcern, heroes and objects of respectful admiration, but nevertheless inwardly ill at ease and possessed with sore misgivings.  Some of their mates were offering sage advice on a matter that concerned them most nearly:  how to take cuts from a cane so as to receive the least possible amount of hurt.  Peterson was full of valuable information.

‘See, you stan’ so,’ he said, giving rather a good imitation of an unhappy scholar in the act of receiving condign punishment, ‘holdin’ yer hand like this, you know, keepin’ yer eye on Jo; an’ jes’ when his nibs comes down you shoves yer hand forwards, that sort, an’ it don’t hurt fer sour apples.’

‘Don’t cut no more’n nothin’ at all,’ added the boy ’who was called Moonlight, in cheerful corroboration.

Ted, who was very pale, and had a hunted look in his eyes, nodded his head hopefully, and rehearsed the act with pathetic gravity.

The little girls, who should have been at the other end of the ground, clustered at the corner and peeped round the portico, some giggling, others fully seized of the gravity of the situation.  Dick in spite of his fine air of sang froid was well aware that there was one little girl there, a pretty little girl of about ten, with brown hair and dark serious eyes, who was suffering keenest apprehensions on his behalf, and who would weep with quite shameless abandonment when it came to his turn to endure the torments Mr. Joel Ham knew so well how to inflict.  Dick was rather superior to little girls; his tender sentiment was usually lavished on ladies ten or twelve years his senior; but he could not hide from himself the fact that Kitty Grey’s affection, however hopeless it might be, was at times most gratifying.  Once he had resented its manifestations with bitterness, imagining that they were likely to bring him into contempt and undermine his authority; and when she interfered in his memorable fight with Bill Cole and fiercely attacked his opponent with a picket, cutting his head and incapacitating him for fighting for the rest of the day, he felt that he could never forgive her.  She had violated the rule of battle and outraged the noble principle of fair play; and, worse and worse, had disgraced him in the eyes of the world by making him appear as a weakling seeking protection behind a despised petticoat.  He reviled Kitty for that action in such overwhelming language that the poor girl fled in tears, and next day it was only with the greatest difficulty that she persuaded him to accept two pears and a blood-alley as a peace offering.