"This term," said she, "Mr. Scrafton is coming at half-past ten instead of at eleven, and those boys who are to go to him will be in their places in the upper schoolroom at twenty-five minutes past ten each morning." A list followed of the boys who were promoted to go to Mr. Scrafton that term; it ended with the name of little Woodman. Harry happened to be engaged in the background in the intellectual task of teaching a tiny child his alphabet. He could not help seeing some ruddy cheeks turn pale as the list was read; but Woodman, with a fine regardlessness, was reading a letter from Devonshire behind another boy's back. Punctually at ten-thirty a thunderous knock resounded from the front door, and Harry was sorry that he had not been looking out of the window. He saw Mrs. Bickersteth jump up and bustle from the room with a most solicitous expression, and he heard a loud voice greeting her heartily in the hall. Heavy feet ran creaking up the stairs a few minutes later, and Mrs. Bickersteth returned to her task of hearing tables and setting sums. Meanwhile Harry was devoting himself to the very smallest boys in the school, mites of five and six, whose nurses brought them in the morning and came back for them at one o'clock. About eleven, however, Mrs. Bickersteth suggested that these little men would be the better for a breath of air, and would Mr. Ringrose kindly take them into the back-garden for ten minutes, and see that they did not run on the grass? Now, Harry's pocket was still loaded with a missive addressed to the editor of _Tommy Tiddler_, which obviously must be posted by his own hand, and might even now be too late. He therefore asked permission to go as far as the pillar-box at the corner, in order to post a letter; and Mrs. Bickersteth, who was luckily in the best of tempers, not only nodded blandly, but added that she would be excessively obliged if Mr. Ringrose would also post some letters of hers which he would find upon the hall-table. So Harry sallied forth, with an infant in sailor-clothes holding each of his hands, and whom should he find loitering at the corner but Gordon Lowndes? "Why, Ringrose," cried he, "this is well met indeed! I was just on my way to have a word with you. I was looking for the house." The hearty manner and the genial tone would have been enough for Harry at an earlier stage of his acquaintance with this man; but now instinctively he knew them for a cloak, and he would not relinquish the small boys' hands for the one which he felt was awaiting his, though his eyes had never fallen from Lowndes's spectacles. "I am not sure that you would have been able to see me," was his reply. "I am on duty even now. What was the point?" "Is it impossible for me to have a word with you alone?" Harry told the little boys to walk on slowly to the pillar. "It will literally have to be a word," he added pointedly. Yet his curiosity was whetted. What could the man want with him here and now?