"Yes. Don't you know he keeps a dirty public-house in Maltby?--a regular cad, they say. The fishing-fellows have seen him up at the Weir now and then." "I don't know how he came across him, but my young brother has just been buying a bat from him, and I don't much fancy it." "No, the youngster won't get any good with that fellow; you had better tell him," said Wraysford. "So I have, and he won't do it again." Shortly after this Pembury hobbled in on his way to bed. "You're a pretty fellow," said he to Oliver; "not one of our fellows cares a rush about the _Dominican_ since you made yourself into the latest sensation." "Oh, don't let us have that up again," implored Oliver. "All very well, but what is to become of the _Dominican_?" "Oh, have a special extra number about me. Call me a coward, and a fool, and a Tadpole, any mortal thing you like, only shut up about the affair now!" Pembury looked concerned. "Allow me to feel your pulse," said he to Oliver. "Feel away," said Oliver, glad of any diversion. "Hum! As I feared--feverish. Oliver, my boy, you are not well. Wandering a bit in your mind, too; get to bed. Be better soon. Able to talk like an ordinary rational animal then, and not like an animated tom-cat. Good-bye!" And so saying he departed, leaving the friends too much amused to be angry at his rudeness. The two friends did a steady evening's work after this, and the thought of the Nightingale Scholarship drove away for the time all less pleasant recollections. They slept, after it all, far more soundly than Loman, whose dreams were disturbed by that everlasting top joint all the night long. The reader will no doubt have already decided in his own mind whether Oliver Greenfield did rightly or wrongly in putting his hands into his pockets instead of using them to knock down Loman. It certainly did not seem to have done him much good at the time. He had lost the esteem of his comrades, he had lost the very temper he had been trying to keep-- twenty times since the event--and no one gave him credit for anything but "the better part of valour" in the whole affair. And yet that one effort of self-restraint was not altogether an unmanly act. At least, so thought Wraysford that night, as he lay meditating upon his friend's troubles, and found himself liking him none the less for this latest singular piece of eccentricity. CHAPTER TEN. THE FOURTH JUNIOR AT HOME. Stephen, before he had been a fortnight in the school, found himself very much at home at Saint Dominic's. He was not one of those exuberant, irrepressible boys who take their class-fellows by storm, and rise to the top of the tree almost as soon as they touch the bottom. Stephen, as the reader knows, was not a very clever boy, or a very dashing boy, and yet he somehow managed to get his footing among his comrades in the Fourth Junior, and particularly among his fellow Guinea-pigs.