THE early spring brought a new development. Thekla, who attended classes at the High School, came home with unmistakable tokens of measles, and Primrose did the same, in common with most of their contemporaries at Rockstone. Nor was there any chance that either Lily Underwood at Clipstone or Lena Merrifield at the Goyle would escape; indeed, they both showed an amount of discomfort that made it safer to keep them where they were, than to try to escape in the sharp east wind and frost. No one was much dismayed at what all regarded as a trifling ailment, even if dignified as German. Angela owned that she regarded it as a relief, since infection might last till the summer, and the only person who was—as he owned—trying to laugh at himself with Angela, was Bernard, who could not keep out of his mind’s eye a little grave at Colombo. As he walked home, at the turning he saw a figure wearily toiling upwards, which proved to be Wilfred. “Holloa! you are at home early!” “I had an intolerable headache!” “Measles, eh?” “No such thing! Once when I was a kid in Malta. But I say, Bear,” he added, coming up with quickened pace, “you could do me no end of a favour if you would advance me twenty pounds.” “Whew!” Bernard whistled. “There is Lady Day coming, and I can pay you then—most assuredly.” And an asseveration or two was beginning. “Twenty pounds don’t fly promiscuously about the country,” muttered Bernard, chiefly for the sake of giving himself time. “But I tell you I shall have a quarter from the works, and a quarter from my father (with his hand to his head). That’s—that’s—. Awful skinflints both of them! How is a man to do, so cramped up as that?” “Oh! and how is a man to do if he spends it all beforehand?” “I tell you, Bernard, I must have it, or—or it will break my mother’s heart! And as to my father, I’d—I’d cut my throat—I’d go to sea before he knew! Advance it to me, Bear! You know what it is to be in an awful scrape. Get me through this once and I’ll never—” Bernard did not observe that the scrape of his boyhood over the drowned Stingo had hardly been of the magnitude that besought for twenty pounds. He waived the personal appeal, and asked, “What is the scrape?” “Why, that intolerable swindler and ruffian, Hart, deceived me about Racket, and—” “A horse at Avoncester?” said Bernard, light beginning to dawn on him. “I made sure it was the only way out of it all, and they said Racket was as sure as death, and now the brute has come in third. Hart swears there was foul play, but what’s that to me? I’m done for unless you will help me over.” “If it is a betting debt, the only safe way is to have it out with your father, and have done with it.”