"Done?" said Pridgin, who, comfortably ensconced in his easy-chair with his feet upon the window-ledge, was reading a comic paper. "Yes, thanks," said I, half terrified lest he should demand to read my not too lucid epistle. "All right. Go and tell Crofter I want him, will you? Look alive, and then cut to bed." Here was a blow! I had been at all this labour in order to avoid the painful necessity of an interview with Crofter, and here I was as badly off as ever. "Can't you hear?" said Pridgin as I hesitated. "If you please, Pridgin," said I, resolved to take the bull by the horns, "I'm awfully sorry, but I don't want Crofter to catch me. The fact is--" Pridgin's good-humoured reply was to shy a book at me, which I was fortunate enough to miss, but which Tempest, who entered the study at the moment, caught fairly on his forehead. "Hullo! Are you and the kid playing catch?" said he. "Sorry to disturb you, really; but my fag's skulking somewhere, and I want to borrow yours to take a message to Crofter." "Was it a plot, or what? I had far better have written in the faggery after all." "That was exactly the subject about which the kid and I were playing catch just now," said Pridgin. "I asked him to go to Crofter too." "What, has he been sending you a _billet-doux_?" said Tempest. "Well, yes. He seems to be sore I didn't ask him to tea yesterday, and says he's afraid some one has been libelling him, though how he knew I had any one here last night I can't imagine." "That's funny," said Tempest; "he writes to me to say he is sorry I should take the trouble to call him a beast in public. He understands a fellow's right to his private opinion, he says, and would be sorry not to be allowed his about me, but he thinks it imprudent to shout it out for every one to hear. Just his style." "I was going to send him word to ask him to come in and make himself a cup of tea out of my pot, just to show there was no ill-feeling," said Pridgin. "And I was going to say that I hope he won't trouble to think better of me in private then I think of him in public. Though for the life of me I can't imagine what he refers to." "The fact is. Tempest," said Pridgin, putting his feet up on the window-ledge again, "it's just as well to be above board with Crofter. He's a slippery customer, and if he knows what we think of him, and we know what he thinks of us, we shall get on much better." "If he'd only give a chap a chance of a row with him," said Tempest; "but he won't. The more down on him you are, the more affectionate he is, and the sweeter he smiles. Ugh!" "But who on earth has been blabbing to him?" said Pridgin; "not Wales?" "Wales?" said Tempest; "rather not. He's not that sort." "I don't think he is," said Pridgin; "and yet, old man--the fact is-- I--" "You don't fancy Wales, I know."