"Oh, if you do, you needn't bother about the rest of what you owe me," she responded quickly. "I don't want to be mean, but I should be dreadfully put out if I couldn't give Dora a birthday present!" "Of course you would. I think I must give her something myself; I'll see about it. I wonder what she'd like!" Angel was quite unconscious that her brother had asked her to join him for a talk with the idea of inducing her to lend him some money, and that she had made the broaching of the subject easy for him. If he really repaid her on Saturday she would be pleased to think she had been able to serve him. The little girl would have been horrified if she had known how her money would be spent. The truth of the matter was that Gerald had fallen into the clutches of unscrupulous hands, for Reginald Hope had soon discovered the weak points in his character; and Gerald, flattered at being noticed by a boy older than himself, had been easily induced to indulge in betting on a small scale. Unfortunately, sometimes he had won—otherwise, perhaps he would not have continued in what he knew in his heart to be an evil course—but oftener he lost, and then found great difficulty in paying his debts. At the present time he owed Reginald Hope several shillings, and the eighteen pence he had just borrowed from his sister he intended handing over on the morrow to the boy who was certainly his evil genius. He hoped by Saturday to win back some of the money he had lost, and by that means to keep faith with Angel. Gerald, as may be imagined, was not at all happy at this period of his life. He was shrewd enough to see that the fact of his being under the patronage of Reginald Hope was quite enough to make many of the Grammar School boys regard him with suspicion; even the Mickles were not as genial to him as they had been at first, and Rabjohns had been heard to say that "Young Willis was a regular toady to Hope," a remark which had made Gerald all the angrier because he could not fail to recognize there was truth in it. It had been a great surprise to find that the butcher's son, with his plain unvarnished speech, was respected in the school far more than the doctor's son, with his fascinating manners and plausible tongue; and that instead of Hope's refusing to know Rabjohns, it was Rabjohns who actually declined to have anything to do with Hope. The brother and sister remained in the orchard till the sun set, and it began to grow chilly under the trees; then they rose, and walked towards the house. "I wish you'd tell me who spoke to you about my having been fishing in the clay pits last Saturday," Gerald said coaxingly; "I should like to know who it was." But Angel shook her head and refused to tell. "You'll keep your word, and not go there again, won't you?" she questioned. "Oh yes, of course I will! You needn't think any more about it. You might tell me—"