Page:The Fight at Dame Europa's School.djvu/18

 of late, had sometimes trebled or quadrupled his half-yearly pocket money out of the produce of his tool-house and garden.

By the side of Louis' domain was that of William, the biggest and strongest of all the monitors. He set up, however, for being a very studious and peaceable Boy, and made the rest of the school believe that he had never provoked a quarrel in his life. He was rather fond of singing psalms and carrying Testaments about in his pocket; and many of the Boys thought Master William a bit of a humbug. He was proud as anybody of his garden, but he never went to work in it without casting envious eyes on two little flowerbeds which now belonged to Louis, but which ought by rights, he thought, to belong to him.



Indeed, it was notorious that in old days, before either Louis or William came to the school, one of Louis' predecessors in the garden had pulled up some stakes which served for a boundary, and cribbed a piece of his neighbor's ground. For a long while William had set his heart upon getting it back again; but he kept his wishes to himself, and nobody suspected that so good and religious a Boy could be guilty of coveting what was admitted by the whole school to be now the property of another. Only one Boy, his favorite fag, did William take into his confidence in the matter. This was a sharp, shrewd lad named Mark, not over scrupulous in what he did, full of deep tricks and dodges, and so cunning that the old Dame herself, though she had the eyes of a