Glyn Severn's Schooldays Part 44

"And you will never do so any more?" cried Glyn half-mockingly.

"Never! never! I swear I won't!"

"Well," said Glyn, whose rage seemed to have entirely evaporated, "I suppose that it would pretty well ruin you, at all events for this school. I don't want to be hard on you; but I can't help half-hating you, Slegge, for the way you have behaved to that poor little beggar Burton. Look here, Slegge, if you say honestly that you beg pardon--"

"Yes," cried the lad. "I do beg your pardon, Severn!"

"No; I don't want you to beg my pardon," cried Glyn. "I can take care of myself. I want you to tell that poor little chap that you are sorry you ill-used him, and promise that you will never behave badly to him again."

"Yes, yes. I will, I will. But you are going to tell the Doctor?"

"No, I shall not. I am not a sneak," said Glyn, "nor a coward neither.

I have shown you that, and I am not going to jump on a fellow when he's down. But come along here."

"To the Doctor's? Oh no, no!"

"Be quiet, I tell you, and wipe your eyes and blow your nose. You don't want everybody to see?"

"No, no.--Thank you!--No," cried the big fellow hurriedly. "I couldn't help it. I am not well. I must go to my room and have a wash before the breakfast-bell rings. May I go now?"

"No; you will be all right. The fellows won't see. I only want you to come over here to where Burton is. No, there he goes! I'll call him here. There, don't show that we have been quarrelling.--Hi! Burton!"

cried Glyn, stepping to the garden-hedge and shouting loudly, with the effect that as soon as the little fellow realised who called he came bounding towards him, but every now and then with a slight limp.

"Just a quiet word or two that you are sorry you hurt him; and I want you to show it afterwards--not in words."

"You want me, Severn?" cried the little fellow, looking from one to the other wonderingly as soon as he realised that his friend was not alone.

"Yes. Slegge and I have been talking about you. He wants to say a word or two to you about hurting you the other day."

The little fellow glanced more wonderingly than ever at his big enemy.

"Does he?" he said dubiously, and he turned his eyes from one to the other again.

"Oh yes," said Slegge, with rather a pitiful attempt to speak in a jocular tone, which he could not continue to the end. "I am precious sorry I kicked you so hard. But you'll forgive me and shake hands-- won't you, Burton?"

"Ye-es, if you really are sorry," said the little fellow, slowly raising his hand, which was s.n.a.t.c.hed at and forcibly wrung, just as the breakfast-bell rang out, and Slegge turned and dashed off towards the schoolhouse as hard as he could run.

"I say, Severn," said little Burton, turning his eyes wonderingly up at his companion, who had playfully caught him by the ear and begun leading him towards where the bell was clanging out loudly as Sam Grigg tugged at the rope, "do you think Slegge means that?"

"Oh yes. I have been talking to him about it, and I am sure he's very sorry now."

"Oh, I say, Severn," cried the little fellow joyously, and with his eyes full of the admiration he felt, "what a chap you are!"

Some one who sat near took an observation that morning over the breakfast that Slegge did not seem to enjoy his bread and b.u.t.ter, and set it down to the b.u.t.ter being too salt; and though the Doctor waited for days in the antic.i.p.ation that the sender of the anonymous letter would come to him to confess, he expressed himself to the masters as disappointed, for the culprit did not come, and the affair died out in the greater interest that was taken later on in the matter of the belt.

Still, somebody did go to see the Doctor, and he looked at him wonderingly, for it was not the boy he expected to see, but the very last whom he would have ventured to suspect.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

GLYN'S WORRIED BRAIN.

"Is any one with the Doctor, Wrench?"

"No, sir," replied the man distantly, and he looked curiously at Glyn.

"Aren't you well this morning, sir?"

"Yes--no. Don't ask questions," cried the boy petulantly.

"All right, sir," said the man. "I don't want to ask no questions.

There's been too much of it lately. Suspicions and ugly looks, and the rest of it. I'd have given warning the other day, only if I had, the next thing would have been more suspicion and the police perhaps had in to ask me why I wanted to go. Shall I ask the Doctor, sir, if he will see you?"

"No," cried Glyn, and walking past the man he tapped at the study-door, and in response to the Doctor's deep, "Come in," entered.

"What does this mean?" muttered Wrench. "I don't like listening; but if I went there and put my ear to the keyhole I could catch every word; and so sure as I did somebody would come into the hall and find me at it.

So I won't go. But what does it mean? Young Severn's found out all about it, as sure as I stand here. Then it's one of the boys after all.

Well, I don't care about it as long as it ain't me or Sam, so I'll go on with my work."

Meanwhile Glyn had entered, closed the door after him, and stood gazing at the Doctor with a curious sensation in his breast that seemed to stop all power of speaking connectedly, as he had meant to do when he had obeyed the impulse to make a clean breast to his old preceptor.

"Well, Severn," said the Doctor gravely, as he laid down his pen, thrust up his gla.s.ses till they were stopped by the stiff grey hair, and allowed himself to sink back in his writing-chair, "you wish to speak to me?"

"Yes, sir, please; I--" Glyn stopped short.

That was all that would come, so the Doctor waited for a few moments to give him time to collect himself, and then with an encouraging smile: "Are you unwell, my boy? Do you wish to see our physician?"

Glyn uttered a kind of gasp, and then, making a tremendous effort, the power to speak returned, and he cried, "Oh no, sir; I am quite well, only--only I am in great trouble, and I want to speak to you."

"Indeed!" said the Doctor gravely, as he placed his elbows upon the table, joined his finger-tips, and looked over them rather sadly at his visitor. "I am glad you have come, my boy," he continued gently, "for I like my pupils to look up to me as if for the time being I stood in the place of their parents. Now then, speak out. What is it? Some fresh quarrel between you and Mr Slegge?"

"No, sir," cried Glyn. "It's about that dreadful business of Singh's belt."

"Ah!" said the Doctor, rather more sharply. "You know something about it?"

"Yes, sir. It's about that I have come. About people being wrongfully suspected, and all the unpleasantry."

"Indeed!" said the Doctor, and he now spoke rather coldly. "You know, Severn, where it is?"

"I--I think so, sir. Yes, sir," continued the boy, speaking more firmly, "and I want to tell you all I do know."

The Doctor fixed his eyes rather sternly now, for a strange suspicion was entering his mind, due to the boy's agitated manner and his hesitating, half-reticent speech.

"Well," he said, "go on; and I beg, my boy, that you tell me everything without reservation, though I am sorry, deeply grieved, that you should have to come and speak to me like this."

Glyn seemed to breathe far more freely now, and as if the nervous oppression at his breast had pa.s.sed away.

"You see, sir," he began, "I have known all along that Singh had that very valuable belt. It was his father's, and the Maharajah used to wear it; and when he died my father took charge of it and all the Maharajah's valuable jewels as well."