'What?' he said. I obliged with a repetition of my remark. 'Likely bits? Oh, you mean for the Thucydides. I don't know. Mellish never sets the bits any decent ordinary individual would set. I should take my chance if I were you.' 'What are you going to do?' 'I'm going to read _Pickwick_. Thicksides doesn't come within a mile of it.' I thought so too. 'But how about tomorrow?' 'Oh, I shan't be there,' he said, as if it were the most ordinary of statements. 'Not there! Why, have you been sacked?' This really seemed the only possible explanation. Such an event would not have come as a surprise. It was always a matter for wonder to me _why_ the authorities never sacked Bradshaw, or at the least requested him to leave. Possibly it was another case of the ass and the bundles of hay. They could not make up their minds which special misdemeanour of his to attack first. 'No, I've not been sacked,' said Bradshaw. A light dawned upon me. 'Oh,' I said, 'you're going to slumber in.' For the benefit of the uninitiated, I may mention that to slumber in is to stay in the House during school on a pretence of illness. 'That,' replied the man of mystery, with considerable asperity, 'is exactly the silly rotten kid's idea that would come naturally to a complete idiot like you.' As a rule, I resent being called a complete idiot, but this was not the time for asserting one's personal dignity. I had to know what Bradshaw's scheme for evading the examination was. Perhaps there might be room for two in it; in which case I should have been exceedingly glad to have lent my moral support to it. I pressed for an explanation. 'You may jaw,' said Bradshaw at last, 'as much as you jolly well please, but I'm not going to give this away. All you're going to know is that I shan't be there tomorrow.' 'I bet you are, and I bet you do a jolly rank paper too,' I said, remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He took me up at once. 'What'll you bet?' he said. Now I was prepared to wager imaginary sums to any extent he might have cared to name, but as my actual worldly wealth at that moment consisted of one penny, and my expectations were limited to the shilling pocket-money which I should receive on the following Saturday--half of which was already mortgaged--it behoved me to avoid doing anything rash with my ready money. But, since a refusal would have meant the downfall of my arguments, I was obliged to name a figure. I named an even sixpence. After all, I felt, I must win. By what means, other than illness, could Bradshaw possibly avoid putting in an appearance at the Thucydides examination? 'All right,' said Bradshaw, 'an even sixpence. You'll lose.' 'Slumbering in barred.'