“Oh--_don’t_!” Hal was unhappy and frightened beyond ordinary exasperation now. He simply could not understand what had occurred to Bunny, to weaken him like this. Nor could Bunny, except that his own scrapes always left him something to do, something to suffer, some poise to maintain, and an inner conviction that, in spite of all the surface fuss, they really did not fundamentally matter. Whereas Hal’s loss of moral prestige did matter. And it had, moreover, robbed Bunny of a prerogative. Bunny liked being the bad boy of the family. Hal’s usurpation of the position was unnatural; and when Bunny tried to adjust the look of things--only the look of them--Hal resisted and made brutal statements of fact. And Bunny felt helpless.... Especially as he had lulled his quivering and damaged faith in Hal into a belief that the money had really been annexed in his own interest, and that, therefore, the tuck-shop scrape was at the bottom of all the recent widdershins action of the world. Still showing stained cheeks, and with listless feet, Bunny returned to his father, and repeated Hal’s dogged denial of his tale. And Mr. Maxwell spread about the house how Bunny had tried to shield his elder brother by pretending his elder brother was shielding him. And Bunny gained more halo, and was correspondingly more downcast and wretched, wearing it uneasily, as a woman in a resplendent new hat which does not suit her. [IX] DINNER forced the scattered agitations of the Laburnums round the same table. It was Hal’s reluctance, and not his sense of climax, which brought him last into the dining-room. The occasion was very much as Ursula had foretold, except that she had not reckoned on the swift personal misery which conquered her at the first sight of Hal, hitherto invulnerable, now exposed without his armour of unconscious lordliness. Up till now, she had been aware of the blow which the family had sustained, without, as it were, becoming intimate with it. But now--“I can’t bear it,” she told herself, fingers interlocked and crushed together under the cloth, knees rigid, and heart pounding at a ridiculous pace.... Aunt Lavvy was saying to Stanley: “I’m afraid all your favourite books are too solemn for me, Stanley. I tried hard to read more than seven pages of ‘Archæological Splendours of the Dolomites,’ but it was doleful work!” Did none of them _see_ ... that unless he could be quickly protected, big splendid Hal was injured for life? Surely Aunt Lavvy would not make him face the world--school and ’Varsity and Buckler’s Cross--as he now faced the family, apologetically, and with careful eyes that fixed themselves only on inanimate objects. Oh, surely she would not tell? But Ursula knew she would.