“Not too loud, if this is to be secrets,” she whispered, with a nod at the door leading to Ursula’s room, “well, and so vacation is nearly over. Don’t correct me, Hal. I’m practising for next year when you’re at the ’Varsity. It would be too, too terrible if I spoke of ‘holidays’ then, wouldn’t it?” Then, as his silence became formidable--“Is it really something serious, Hal dear? I ought to have seen you were not in the mood for nonsense. Tell me.” He brought out a crumpled oblong of thin paper, blurred with a dull brown and green design. “Here you are,” he said gruffly. But the situation was fifty times stiffer than he had imagined it. He wished that Aunt Lavvy would hurry up and begin to fold it into pliable shape. “Where did you find it?” she asked, startled. “I didn’t find it. I had it.” Bunny, practised in confession, would have added appeal, whether of eyes or tongue. But Hal was waiting for Aunt Lavvy’s help before he could add anything to the bald statement, though she would understand, even back to the irrelevance of Maisie and the Michaelmas daisies ... perhaps she would of her own accord propose to “put things right” with the Bank. He had come to her eager for this gift of “put-things-right,” and venerating her for possessing it.... His throat was gritty, and his knees felt weak. “Well!” exclaimed Aunt Lavvy at last in an indignant whisper. And again, after several seconds had loudly ticked away--“_Well_”.... Hal turned his back and rushed out of the room. What had happened to the world of usual things that, on the same morning as he had betrayed his own code, Aunt Lavvy had failed him? He stumbled into the den which he shared with Bunny, and where William slept. Bunny was there, sprawling across William’s bed, reading “Penrod.” “Thought you’d gone out. I say, what about a spin to Badgery Wood this afternoon?” He looked up for an answer, and saw Hal’s face. “I say ... what--what is it?” Half an hour ago, Hal had been nervous that Bunny, hearing the tale, would be exasperatingly flippant about it. But now, after that terrifying glimpse of Aunt Lavvy metamorphosed by anger, he rather wanted to hear his brother’s light-hearted: “What’s the odds?” When he had finished, Bunny sat staring at the floor, his face getting redder and redder. “Well?” impatiently. And, echoing Aunt Lavvy: “Well?” Hal rapped out again. Bunny was crying. And then Hal gave in to the fact that one swerve from the usual had carried him into a wholly unfamiliar world of behaviour, and that he could not find any way back again from strangeness. “When you’ve quite done,” he growled; adding, “You’d have been surprised if I’d burst out blubbing when you let on to me about your precious scrapes, out in the garden just now.” “This isn’t a scrape,” gulped out Bunny. Hal stopped being a mere schoolboy. “You mean ... it’s worse? It’s the sort of thing one gets put in gaol for?”