eleven.

"I l-l-loathe those girls," said Mark; "one b-b-bubbles and one squeaks."

Billy's seized the phrase. Within a week the girls were known as Bubble and Squeak. One of the fags pinned a card to Archie's door:—

"Which do you like best: chocolate and buttered toast or Bubble and Squeak?"

"What can we do?" said Mark to Jim.

"Is it Bubble or Squeak?" Jim asked.

"I d-d-don't know or care; they're vulgar b-b-beasts. Old Archie has a lock of hair. They've given away tons of it: enough to stuff a sofa."

"They can get more from the same old place," said Jim.

"Oh, it's their own," said Mark. "I hate marmalade-coloured hair—don't you?"

It was after this brief dialogue that Jim noticed a falling off of Mark's interest in his work. For the first time a copy of Iambics deserved some of the remarks which the form-master made upon them. During the next fortnight this negligence, coupled with his stutter and a temporary deafness, sent Mark to the bottom of his class. Jim asked for an explanation.

"It's old Archie. He's playing the devil with himself."

"Let him," said Jim, who was no altruist. "What's the good of worrying? We can't do anything."

"Perhaps we c-c-can," said Mark. "We must," he added.

"You have a scheme?"

Mark nodded. "I d-d-don't know w-what you'll say to it."

"I can't say anything till I hear it."

"S-suppose I give Billy a hint?"

The scheme was so alien to a boy's conception of the word "honour," such a violation of an unwritten code—in fine, such a desperate remedy—that Jim gasped.

"D-don't look like that!" said Mark sharply. "C-can't you see that I loathe it—as—you do. If m-mother were alive I'd write to her. But if I told father, he would come bellowing down, and behave like a bull in a china shop. There would be a jolly r-r-row then."

"Mark," said Jim, "Archie is big enough to look after himself."

"It's worse than you think," Mark said. "He's meeting this g-g-girl after lock-up. He gets out of the pantry window. I daresay he's squared one of the Tobies" (Toby was the generic name for footmen). "And it's frightfully r-r-risky. If he's nailed, he'll be sacked."

"What a silly old ass!" said Jim.

"He runs these frightful risks—for what? To kiss a girl who bubbles at the mouth!"

"It's the one who squeaks," Jim amended. "And she's an artful dodger. She thinks he'll marry her. All right, I'll go with you to Billy after prayers to-night."

"I'll go alone."

"You won't."

"I will."

"No."

"Yes; yes; yes."

Jim's obstinacy prevailed. After prayers, the boys waited in the passage. Jim had been swished by the Doctor in the Fourth Form Room, and his sensations before execution reproduced themselves. Mark seemed cool and collected.

"Sit down," said Billy. "Open your books."

Mark laid his Thucydides upon the table.

"Bless my soul!" ejaculated Billy. He had pushed up his spectacles while he was speaking. Now, he polished a pair of pince-nez and popped them on his nose. Nervousness is contagious.

"We have c-c-come here to t-t-tell you, s-sir, s-s-something which you ought to know."

The house-master blinked, and glanced at both doors. One communicated with the passage, the other opened into the drawing-room, where his wife was playing one of Strauss's waltzes: Wein, Weib und Gesang. Whenever Jim heard this waltz he could conjure up a vision of that square, cosy, book-lined room, the big desk littered with papers, and behind it the burly figure of Billy, his eyes blinking interrogation. He let Mark take his own time.

"Something wrong in the house?" said Billy.

"Yes, sir."

Billy seized a quill pen, and began to bite it.

"Isn't this a serious step for you boys to take?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes, sir."

His gravity became portentous. Perhaps he feared an abominable revelation.

"You both understand," he coughed nervously, "that I may be compelled to act on what you choose to tell me; and if what you have to say implicates—er—others, if others may—er—have to—er—suffer, perhaps severely," he nodded so emphatically that his pince-nez fell off, "it may be well for you to—er—in fact—to," he blew his nose violently, "to bid me—Good night."

"Not yet," said Mark firmly.

Billy's hesitation vanished.

"Go on," he said curtly. "Speak plainly, and conceal nothing."

Mark told his story. He made no mention of the pantry window, nor of the meetings after lock-up. For the rest, he spoke with a conciseness and practical common sense which filled Jim with admiration. As he was concluding, Billy began to smile.

"You are both good fellows, and I'm obliged to you. You must dine with me. I shall pull a string or two, and our—er—marionettes, mark that word; it is pat; our marionettes shall dance elsewhere."

"Not Archie?" gasped Mark.

"No. We can't spare Archibald. I undertake to handle him. Silly fellow, very silly fellow! His father and mother put a better head on your shoulders, my boy"; he tapped Mark's cheek. "And now open old Thicksides. Eh, what? you know your lesson? Then let's hear it." Jim got rather red. "I shan't put you on, Corrance, but Samphire minor and I will construe for your benefit. Fire away, Samphire minor."

The boys went back to their room to find Archie at full length on the sofa. His greeting justified Billy's sagacity in keeping Mark to construe Thucydides. "What a time you fellows have been! I suppose Billy gave you half a dozen readings. Well, let's have 'em, late though it is. I must get my remove this half."

So no suspicion was excited.

Within the week Bubble and Squeak mysteriously disappeared, and Samphire major had an interview with his house-master. What passed was not revealed at the time, but, later, Archie gave Mark some details, which are set down with the premiss that a minor canon of Westchester Cathedral is speaking, not a Fifth Form boy at Harrow.

"Do you remember those girls at Brown's?" he said. "Well, I fell in love with one of them. What? You knew it? Oh! Oh, indeed! The whole school knew it? Ah, well, Billy knew it too. Sent for me, and behaved like a gentleman. Made me blubber like a baby. I give you my word I never felt quite so cheap. It wasn't what he said, but what he left unsaid. And I promised him that I would have nothing more to do with Squeak. He told me a thing or two