"Oh, you've spent sevenpence, have you! Then I've half a mind to give you a licking for spending such a lot. Do you think your mother sent you money to chuck about all over the place? She told me to look after you, and so I will. Give me the key." From a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends, which bulged out the pockets of his knickerbockers, the key was produced. "Don't take the money, Bertie!" Bailey unlocked the desk with a magisterial air. "If your mother knew that you'd spent sevenpence, what d'ye think she'd say to me? She'd say, 'I told you to look after him, and here you let him go chucking the money I sent him to buy a birthday present into his stomach, and making himself as ill as I don't know what! Is that the way to buy a birthday present? Nice affectionate lad you are!'" At this point Bailey, having discovered the one and fivepence, held it in his hand. "I shall put this money into my pockets, and I shall take care of it for you, and when you want it, you come to me and ask for it. D'ye hear?" At this point he slipped the money into his trousers pocket. Willie wept. "What are you snivelling for? If you don't stop I'll take care of your desk as well. Now I think of it, Wheeler wants just such a desk as this. I shouldn't be surprised if he gave me sevenpence for it; it would just come in handy." Bailey subjected the desk to a critical examination. "I'll tell Mr. Fletcher if you take my desk away." "What, sneak, would you? As it happens, I don't care for you or Mr. Fletcher either." Bertie tucked the desk under his arm and moved to the door. Willie flung his head upon his arms and burst into a passion of tears. At the door Bertie turned and surveyed the child. "Here, take your desk. Think I want the thing!" He flung the desk towards his cousin. Falling on the edge of a form, it burst open, and the contents were thrown out of it. Leaving Willie to make the best of a bad case, and pick up his ill-used property, Bertie marched away with the one and fivepence in his pocket. That one and fivepence was all the cash he could secure. He made one or two efforts in the course of the day to increase his capital by the addition of a penny or two, but the efforts were in vain. None of the smaller boys had any money; some of the seniors he suspected were in possession of funds, but in face of their refusal to oblige him with a temporary loan he did not feel justified in taking them by the throats and putting into practice any theory of their money or their life. He suspected he might get neither; sundry knocks and bruises he might be the richer for, but they were riches for which he had no longing. One particularly gallant attack he made upon a suspected seat of capital does not deserve to go unchronicled.