'Now just see if you can't help me out of this hole, Flo,' said the boy, after another pause. 'I told the fellows I'd do something to-night, and I must, you know.' 'Do something!' repeated his sister, 'what do you want to do?' 'I don't want to do anything. The poor beggar might stay at Torrington's for ever if he liked; but you see the others have set their faces against it, and they say I must either make the pater remove him, or else think of another plan to get rid of him. Don't you see, Duffy, I must do one or the other?' 'No, I don't see; and you shan't call me Duffy either, if you mean to help these wretched cads at Torrington's, and I'll never own you for a brother again!' His sister spoke calmly, but with the utmost scorn and contempt in her tones, and then laid her head on the table and burst into tears. 'I'm ashamed of you, I am!' she sobbed through her tears. Leonard stared at her in silent amazement for a minute or two, and then said slowly, 'You don't know this scholarship boy, do you?' She shook her head. 'Of course I don't,' she said, as soon as she could speak. 'Then what are you crying for? I'd be ashamed to cry for a fellow I'd never seen; and you a girl too!' Florence started to her feet as her brother uttered this taunt; and dashing away her tears, with blazing eyes she exclaimed, 'It is not for this strange boy I am crying, but for _you_--that you are as much a cad as Taylor and the rest!' Then, gathering up her books, she marched out of the room with the air of an offended duchess. 'Ah, you're only a girl!' exclaimed Leonard as she departed; and he broke into a whistle, but it soon ended in a sigh, when the door closed and he was left to himself. 'I wonder what girls are made of,' he said, as he slowly opened his lesson books. 'To think of Duffy flying at me like that! She called me a cad too, nasty little thing! I won't speak to her for a week, when we come in here to lessons. I'll give her a taste of Coventry, and see how she likes it.' And Leonard set himself to master a Latin verb. But before he had conned it three minutes his thoughts had wandered to his sister, and from her to Taylor and the lads at school, who expected him to solve the problem that they had made into a bogey--how to get rid of the scholarship boy, since all their efforts thus far had failed. Before he got to school the next morning he met half a dozen of his schoolfellows. 'Well, what's the news, Morrison?' asked two or three in a breath. 'You know, of course, Taylor expects you to bring a message from your father about that fellow to-day.' 'Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they shall never be disappointed,' said Leonard in a tantalising tone.