"See!" Mr. Shane turned his coat-tail pockets inside out. There was nothing in them. "See!" He followed suit with the pockets in his trousers. They also were void and empty. "Nothing! nothing! not a sou! Mr. Fletcher engaged to pay me sixteen pounds a year. There's fifteen shillings owing from last term. I couldn't afford to buy myself a pair of boots when I came back. Look at my boots." Mr. Shane held up his boots, one after the other. Bertie stared at them; they were very much the worse for wear. "And now he tells me that I'm to leave this very day, leave in the very middle of the term, without a penny-piece. He says he cannot let me have a penny-piece. I've worked hard for my money; he knows I've worked hard for my money; he knows I've been cruelly used; and yet he sends me away in the middle of the term a beggar, and with fifteen shillings owing from last term. What am I to do! My mother lives at Braintree. I can't walk all the way to Braintree in Essex, especially in such boots as these; and she hasn't any money to give me when I get there, and I can't get another situation in the middle of the term. It's cruel, cruel, cruel! I'm a beggar, and I shall have to go to the workhouse and sleep in the casual ward, and break stones before they let me leave in the morning. It's wicked cruelty! I don't care who hears me say it, so it is!" Mr. Shane's agitation, though real enough, was also sufficiently grotesque. With his pockets turned inside out, and his collar and necktie all awry, he paced about the schoolroom, swinging his arms, speaking in his thin, cracked tones, the tears running down his cheeks, half choked with passion. It was the grotesque side of the usher's woe which appealed to Bailey. "You don't mean to say Mr. Fletcher won't pay you your wages?" "I do, I do! He says he hasn't got it; he says he doubts if he has five shillings to call his own. What right has he to engage an usher if he has not got five shillings of his own? How does he expect to pay me, and fifteen shillings owing from last term? How am I to walk to Braintree in Essex in these boots without a penny in my pocket? and what will my mother say when I get home--if I ever do get home--with no money in my pocket, and turned out of a situation in the middle of a term? It's a cruel, wicked shame, and I'll shout it out in the middle of the road! I don't care what they say, I will! I won't go without my money, if it's only the fifteen shillings left owing from last term!" "Then I suppose you can't lend me a shilling or two?" "Lend you a shilling or two! How can I? It's for you to advance a loan to me. Bailey, you've been a wicked boy to me ever since I came, and now to come and ask me to lend you money! You're all wicked about the place." "I've got one and fivepence." Bailey held the money in his hand.