'There, you needn't cry over it. I suppose you can't help being only a girl. But mind, if you say a word to father or mother of what I have told you, I never will speak to you again!' And with this last threat Leonard turned with a sigh to his lessons. 'I've wasted a lot of time over you this evening,' he said, after a short silence, during which Duffy had been muttering over a French verb. 'I'm awfully disappointed about it,' he went on, 'for I shall have to tell Taylor and the rest that you're nothing but a duffer.' 'Because I can't tell you how to manage with a boy that I don't know; it isn't fair, Len, and you say boys always are fair,' said his sister, in a tone of protest, as she turned to her lessons once more. Leonard tried to follow her example, but he could not fix his attention upon problems in Euclid with that greater problem unsolved--how the honour of the school was to be saved, and the new boy got rid of? That was really what Taylor and one or two leading spirits had decided must be done; but how to do it was the puzzle! Leonard's lessons were very imperfectly prepared that night, and every moment he could snatch the next morning was given to looking over his books, that he might not utterly fail when he was called upon to produce what he should have learned; and he was conning over one task as he walked to school, when he was overtaken by Taylor and the rest. 'Oh, I say, Dabbs'--Len's nickname among his friends--'we saw that new fellow with another carrying a basket of tools--looked like a carpenter's basket,' said one. 'It was his brother, too, I know--looked as though he was going wood-chopping somewhere,' said another. But Taylor slipped his arm in Len's and drew him aside. 'Look here, what are we going to do about it--what did your clever sister say?' 'She couldn't think of anything last night, she was too busy.' 'Oh, that's all rot you know. You said she would be sure to think of something clever, and it's come to this--that we must do something at once, or Torrington's will go to the dogs, with working fellows coming here and lording it over gentlemen. The question is how are we to get rid of him?' 'Yes, that's it. How are we? It is easy to say, get rid of him, but the question is--how? The only thing that we can do at present that I can see is to send him to Coventry!' To send a boy to Coventry required united action on the part of the whole school, but Leonard Morrison and Taylor, with one or two of their friends, did not despair of persuading their class-mates to follow their example. Of course the boys in the lower classes might speak an occasional word, and the seniors in the upper form might have occasion to do the same, but the classes in this school were large and practically self-contained, so that they had little to do with those in the upper or junior classes; it was therefore comparatively easy for the leading spirits to persuade or compel the rest to follow their lead, whatever it might be.