Willie Thomson, for one, was interested. He had been interested to the extent of grinning in Macgregor’s early tenderness for little Katie, and to the extent of sniggering in his friend’s bashful pursuit of Jessie Mary. But now the interest was that of the boy who discovers a nest just beyond his hand and wonders what sort of eggs he will get if, somehow, he can reach it. On the whole, Willie resented his swollen nose and cut lip less than the recent ill-disguised attempts to avoid his company. The latter rankled. Truth to tell, without Macgregor he was rather a lonely creature, a kind of derelict. No one really wanted him. He was not without acquaintances, shirkers like himself; but in the congregation of loafers is no true comradeship. Without admitting it even to himself, he still admired the boy who had faithfully championed his cause――not always virtuous――in the past, whose material possessions he had invariably shared, whose stolid sense of honour had so often puzzled his own mischievous mind, whose home he had envied despite a certain furtive dread of the woman who ruled there. Altogether it may be questioned whether Willie’s grudge was directed against his old friend and not against that which had caused his old friend’s defection. At all events, he began to spare Macgregor any necessity for dodging, and took to shadowing him on his solitary strolls. On the grey Saturday afternoon of the week rendered so eventful by his first real shave, Macgregor was once more standing by the window of M. Tod’s shop. He was endeavouring to prop up his courage with the recollection of the fact that a fortnight ago, at the same hour as the present, there had been no old woman behind the counter, and with the somewhat rash deduction that no old woman was there now. He was also wondering what he could buy for a penny without making a fool of himself. The spending of a penny when there is absolutely nothing one wants to buy is not quite so simple a transaction as at first thought it may seem――unless, of course, the shop is packed with comestibles; and even then one may hesitate to choose. Besides, Macgregor was obsessed by the memory of the pencil transaction of three nights ago. Had he but kept his head then, and confined his purchase to a single pencil, he might now have had a fair excuse for requiring another. At any rate, he could have met suspicion with the explanation that he had lost the first. But who would believe that he had used, or lost, a whole dozen within the brief space of three days?