A slight titter went round the class, for David had the enviable reputation of “drawing” his pastors and masters (always excepting Head) by the geniality and unexpectedness of his replies. But on this occasion the blandness was a little overdone, and instead of “taking a back seat” Mr. Dutton put down his yellow novel on his desk, back upwards, and came across the room to where David was sitting. The dart, with its wet, inky point lay there, and it was too late to draw his blotting-paper over it. But a more dramatic _dénouement_ than the mere discovery of an inky dart, which might be assessed at fifty lines—or perhaps a hundred, since it was Sunday—hung in the air. “Open your mouth,” said Mr. Dutton, not yet seeing the dart. David had a good large useful mouth, and he opened it very suddenly to its extremest extent, putting out his tongue a little, which might or might not have been an accident. That unruly member was undoubtedly covered with splinters of common pen-holder, and nothing else at all. “Sir-may-I-shut-it-again?” said David all in one breath, opening it, the moment he had spoken, to its widest. Mr. Dutton’s eye fell on the inky dart. “What is that?” he said. David gave a prodigious gulp, and swallowed as much wood-fibre as was convenient. “That, sir?” he said politely. “A paper dart, sir, inked.” “Did you make it?” asked Dubs. David’s face assumed an expression of horror. “Sir, no, sir,” he said in a tone of wounded and innocent indignation. Suddenly David became conscious that his impeccable scene with Mr. Dutton was arousing no interest or amusement among the audience, and his artistic feelings were hurt, for he hated playing to apathetic benches. He looked earnestly and soulfully at Mr. Dutton, but missed appreciative giggles. Nobody appeared to be taking the smallest interest in the dialogue, and all round were bent heads and pens industriously scratching. Then he saw what the rest of the class had already seen. Standing just outside the open window, his foot noiseless on the grass, was the Head, austere and enormous, and fierce and frowning. He had picked up from Mr. Dutton’s desk the yellow-backed novel that lay there, and was looking at it with a portentous face. “Then who made it, if—I say, ‘if’—you did not?” said Mr. Dutton, still unconscious of the presence of his superior. “I suppose another fellow,” said David in very different tones from those in which his moral indignation had found dramatic utterance. Mr. Dutton took up the dart, and inked his shirt-cuff, but David did not smile. “Who made——” he began, and turned and saw. “Oh, jam!” said David under his breath.