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'Like a rascal detected in an act of felony, roared Boddy, 'you concealed it, sir . . . 'Conceal it, sir. 'And I demand, in obedience to my duty, that you instantly exhibit it for my inspection, now, here, at once; no parleying; unbutton, or I call Mr. Rippenger to compel you. I was standing close by my brave Heriot, rather trembling, studious of his manfulness though I was.
'Temple, I see you, sir! called Mr. Rippenger. Poor Temple had advanced into the firelight. With the instinct to defeat the master, I crawled in the line of the shadows to the farther side of a tent, where I felt a hand clutch mine. 'Hide me, said I; and the curtain of the tent was raised.
Rippenger, you've knocked some knowledge into this young gentleman. Temple and I took counsel together hastily; we cried in a breath: Here 's to Julia Rippenger, the prettiest, nicest girl living! and we drank to her. 'Julia! the captain echoed us. 'I join your toast, gentlemen. Mr. Richmond, Mr. Tempus-Julia! By all that's holy, she floats a sinking ship!
Not a boy in the school missed seeing how Boddy's flat head perpetually had a side-eye on him. All this came to an end. John Salter's father lived on the other side of the downs, and invited three of us to spend a day at his house. The selection included Heriot, Saddlebank, and me. Mr. Rippenger, not liking to refuse Mr. Salter, consented to our going, but pretended that I was too young.
My anxiety was relieved by my writing letters to my father, addressed to the care of Miss Julia Rippenger, and posting them in her work-basket. She favoured me with very funny replies, signed, 'Your own ever-loving Papa, about his being engaged killing Bengal tigers and capturing white elephants, a noble occupation that gave me exciting and consolatory dreams of him.
To revive his good humour, Temple uncorked a bottle of champagne. The tramp-woman lent us a tin mug, and round it went. One boy said, 'That's a commencement'; another said, 'Hang old Rippenger. Temple snapped his fingers, and Bystop, a farmer's son, said, 'Well, now I've drunk champagne; I meant to before I died! Most of the boys seemed puzzled by it.
Julia was sent away to a relative by the sea-side, because, one of the housemaids told me, she could not bear to hear of my being beaten. Mr. Rippenger summoned me to his private room to bid me inform him whether I had other relatives besides my father, such as grandfather, grandmother, uncles, or aunts, or a mother.
I dare say Julia would have led me to break my word to my father by speaking of old Riversley, a place I half longed for since my father had grown so distant and dim to me; but confession to Mr. Rippenger seemed, as he said of Heriot's behaviour to him, a gross breach of trust to my father; so I refused steadily to answer, and suffered the consequences now on my dear father's behalf.
Temple and I started up, unaware of what we were going to do, or of anything until we had got a blow a-piece, and were in the thick of it, and Boddy had us both by the collars, and was knocking our heads together, as he dragged us back to our seats. But the boys told us we stopped the execution. Mr. Rippenger addressed us before he left the school-room.
Rippenger receiving them like a pliant hodman; for the result of it was that two days later, without seeing my kings of England, my home again, or London, I was Julia Rippenger's intimate friend and the youngest pupil of the school. My father told me subsequently that we slept at an hotel those two nights intervening.
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