He could never tell Cripps straight out that he had been beaten in the examination; that would be the same thing as telling him to go at once to the Doctor or his father with the document which the boy had signed, and expose the whole affair. And it would be no use making a poor mouth to the landlord of the Cockchafer and begging to be forgiven the debt; Loman knew enough by this time to feel convinced of the folly of that. What was to be done? "I shall have to humbug the fellow some way," said Loman to himself, as he sat in his study the afternoon after the announcement of the result. And then followed an oath. Loman had been going from bad to worse the last month. Ever since he had begun, during the holidays, regularly to frequent the Cockchafer, and to discover that it was his interest to make himself agreeable to the man he disliked and feared, the boy's vicious instincts had developed strangely. Company which before would have offended him, he now found--especially when it flattered him--congenial, and words and acts from which in former days he would have shrunk now came naturally. "I shall have to humbug the fellow somehow," said he; "I only wish I knew how;" and then Loman set himself deliberately to invent a lie for Mr Cripps. A charming afternoon's occupation this for a boy of seventeen! He sat and pondered for an hour or more, sometimes fancying he had hit upon the object of his search, and sometimes finding himself quite off the tack. Had Cripps only known what care and diligence was being bestowed on him that afternoon he would assuredly have been highly nattered. At length he seemed to come to a satisfactory decision, and, naturally exhausted by such severe mental exertion, Loman quitted his study and sought in the playground the fresh air and diversion he so much needed. One of the first boys he met there was Simon. "Hullo, Loman!" said that amiable genius, "would you have believed it?" "Believed what?" said Loman. "Oh! you know, I thought you knew, about the Nightingale, you know. I say, how jolly low you came out!" "Look here! you'd better hold your row!" said Loman, surlily, "unless you want a hiding." "Oh; it's not that, you know. What I meant was about Greenfield senior. Isn't that a go?" "What about him? Why can't you talk like an ordinary person, and not like a howling jackass?" "Why, you know," said Simon, off whom all such pretty side compliments as these were wont to roll like water off a duck's back--"why, you know, about that paper?" "What paper?" said Loman, impatiently. "The one that was stolen out of the Doctor's study, you know. Isn't that a go? But we're going to hush it up. Honour bright!"