Part 8 (2/2)

Said Tommy, scornfully: ”If you says it all out at one bang you'll be done at the start.”

Shovel sighed.

”And you should blubber when yer says it,” added Tommy, who could laugh or cry merely because other people were laughing or crying, or even with less reason, and so naturally that he found it more difficult to stop than to begin. Shovel was the taller by half a head, and irresistible with his fists, but to-night Tommy was master.

”You jest stick to me, Shovel,” he said airily. ”Keep a grip on my hand, same as if yer was Elspeth.”

”But what was we copped for, Tommy?” entreated humble Shovel.

Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered, confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father's news-sheet.

”Well, then,” said Tommy, inspired by this same source, ”there's a room a butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler.”

”It was me what stabbed the butler,” Shovel interposed, jealously.

”How could you do it, Shovel?”

”With a knife, I tell yer!”

”Why, you didn't have no knife,” said Tommy, impatiently.

This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily:

”Well, I bit him in the leg.”

”Not you,” said selfish Tommy. ”You forgets about repenting, and if I let yer bite him, you would brag about it. It's safer without, Shovel.”

Perhaps it was. ”How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy?”

”Fourteen days.”

”So did you?” Shovel said, with quick anxiety.

”I got a month,” replied Tommy, firmly.

Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall.

Then, ”I'm as game as you, and gamer,” he whined.

”But I'm better at repenting. I tell yer, I'll cry when I'm repenting.”

Tommy's face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious look at it:

”You--you ain't like any other cove I knows,” to which Tommy replied, also in an awe-struck voice:

”I'm so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks 'bout myself I'm--I'm sometimes near feared.”

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