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Fancy we've rather a pull on him there." "You're a jolly clever fellow, Silk," said Gilks, admiringly. "May be, but I'm not such a nice boy as you are, Gilks." Giles and his ally knew their business well enough to see that they must go to work "gingerly" to recover their lost Limpet.
And he began to walk on, Gilks sullenly following. "You saw Wyndham the other day?" said Silk. "Suppose I did?" "What did he want?" "I don't know some foolery or other. I didn't listen to him." "You needn't tell lies. What did he want, I say?" "How should I know?" retorted Gilks. "What did he want? do you hear?" repeated the other.
"You won't do it, will you?" asked Bloomfield. "No. But the reason why Silk wanted it was because he was afraid of something else coming out. He says it was Gilks who cut the rudder- lines." "What! Gilks?" exclaimed Bloomfield, standing still in astonishment. "It can't be! Gilks was one of us. He backed our boat all along!"
But a drowning man will clutch at a straw, and so Wyndham, as his last hope, faced the unpromising task of working on the generosity of his two old patrons. He began with Gilks. Gilks was in his own house, and had always seemed to be the least vicious, as he was also the least clever of the two. Besides, of late it was notorious Gilks and Silk were no longer the friends they had been.
There was something more than toothache the matter with Gilks that afternoon. The fact was his spirits were a good deal worse than his teeth. Things had been going wrong with him for some time, ever since the day he was politely turned out of the schoolhouse boat. He had lost caste among his fellows, and what little influence he ever had among the juniors had also vanished.
"Well," said Silk, "as I've not much faith in the Welchers' boat in fact, I'm not sure if they'll be able to get up a crew at all I feel delightfully impartial." "I hope you'll back us," said Wyndham, earnestly. "Of course, old Gilks is one of your crew," said Silk. "You know," said the boy, "I'd give anything for our boat to win.
"I know I do," said Gilks, "but I hate Riddell more than the lot put together." "I should have thought he was rather an inoffensive duffer," suggested Silk. "That's just the worst of it. I'd give anything to catch him out in anything that wasn't quite square, just to pay him out for his sickening priggishness.
"Not exactly!" said Gilks, bitterly; "but I've come round to letting the cad alone. What's the good of bothering?" "And you mean to say you'd let him go on knowing who the fellow is who cut the rudder-lines of our boat, and not make him say who it is?" "I expect that's all stuff about his knowing at all," said Gilks. "Not it! Between you and me, I fancy he's had a tip from somewhere." "He has?
Gilks had reached this dismal climax in his reflections, when he suddenly became aware that the object of his meditations was approaching him. Silk had his own reasons for not joining the throng that was looking on at the juniors' match. It may have been mere lack of interest, or it may have been a special desire to take this walk.
"Because," replied Fairbairn, taking Riddell's arm and walking slowly off "because we can do better without you." Gilks stared at him a moment as though he meditated flying at him. If he did, he thought better of it, and turned away, muttering to himself that he would pay them all out, let them see if he did not.
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