It was very different to be a prisoner now alone. I longed for Mercer's
companionship, but it was so that I might punish him for what I again
and again called his miserable cowardice, which seemed to me to make his
crime ten times worse. And so I walked up and down the little room
restlessly, thinking over the times when my school-fellow had talked
about the watch, and his intense longing to possess it, or such a one.
Nothing could be plainer. He had given way at last, and taken it on
that unlucky day when he was hanging about talking to me as I lay on the
grass with my head throbbing, and then walking away toward the tent or
to where he could get a good look at the cricketers.
"Too much for him," I said,--"too much for him, and I am to take the
credit of his theft. But I will not. If he is such a mean coward as to
let me take his stealing on my shoulders, he is not worth sparing, and
he shall take the credit for himself--upon his own shoulders and not
mine."
"Oh, what an ass I have been ever to make friends with such a fellow!"
I cried, after a pause. "I ought to have known better. Never mind, I
do know better now, and to-morrow morning I'll ask to see the Doctor,
and I'll tell him everything, and--get him expelled!"
That set me thinking once more about his people at home, and as I did, I
began to waver, and call to mind how terrible it would be, and that I
liked him too well in spite of all.
For I did like him. I had never had a brother, and he had seemed to
fill his place, so that now, for the first time, I fully understood how
we two lads had become knit together, and how terribly hard it would be
to speak out.
I sat down by the window at last, to let the cool breeze play upon my
aching temples, and as I leaned my head against the side, the cheery
voices of the boys in the field floated up to me, to make me more
wretched still.
"It's nothing to them," I said to myself. "Nobody there cares, and Eely
and Dicksee were only too glad to have their revenge upon me. I don't
know, though," I said; "they both thought I took the watch, and believed
all they said. But it was a triumph for them."