“Yes, I know, dad. I’m sorry. You’ve guessed now, of course, why Hal kept back that quid from the Bank?” “You asked him----?” And the burden of depression lightened with Bunny’s answer: “Yes, I was dead scared that old Swayne would write to you. He’d threatened to; so I owned up to Hal--and he sent off the fifteen bob today, and told me not to worry any more. It--was awfully decent of him, wasn’t it, dad?” “Theft is never decent, my boy.” “But it makes a difference,” Bunny urged, “that he grabbed the note to shield me from your wrath?” “To shield me from your wrath” was overdoing it. And if Mr. Maxwell had remembered more about boys in their teens, he would have realized here that Bunny’s confession was too glib and well-produced to be natural. If Bunny had been relating a true state of affairs, his manner would have been either sullen or abashed, and his speech a stumbling incoherence. “It makes a difference, yes. Go and tell Hal I want him.” Hal listened disgustedly to Bunny’s account of the altered situation. “You costly young fathead. What in the name of Mike made you spin him a yarn like that?” “Just an idea,” Bunny explained airily. “Idea your grandmother! Well, you can march straight down again, and tell him it’s all bunkum.” Hal hated theatricals. And no small part of his shame at the recent situation was the fact that it seemed to twitch everybody’s behaviour well away from the normal. Bunny had known Hal well enough not to expect from him a quick flush of emotion, a grateful hand laid on his shoulder, a gruff: “It’s--awfully decent of you, Bunny, old man. I shan’t forget ...” which was the way a boy accepted another boy’s sacrifice in the noblest type of school fiction. But he had just hoped to persuade Hal to acquiesce in the inspired falsehood. “The letters crossed. You _did_ send off fifteen bob for me today. Wasn’t it the same quid?” “No.” “Well, but it works out to the same. When you hung on to Aunt Lavvy’s pound, wasn’t it because lending me that fifteen bob made you fifteen bob short?” “No. Nothing to do with it. She’d had her ’phone call from the Bank, and asked me about that extra pound note, before you came out to me at the earthworks about your tuck-shop scrape.” Bunny immediately collapsed into tears again.