'Humph!' he went; 'she shall suffer for that.'

All this was like music going on until the curtain should lift and reveal
my father to me.

There was soon a secret to be read in Heriot's face for one who loved
it as I did. Julia's betrayed nothing. I was not taken into their
confidence, and luckily not; otherwise I fear I should have served
them ill, I was so poor a dissembler and was so hotly plied with
interrogations by the suspicious usher. I felt sure that Heriot and
Julia met. His eyes were on her all through prayer-time, and hers
wandered over the boys' heads till they rested on him, when they gave a
short flutter and dropped, like a bird shot dead. The boys must have had
some knowledge that love was busy in their midst, for they spoke of
Heriot and Julia as a jolly couple, and of Boddy as one meaning to play
the part of old Nick the first opportunity. She was kinder to them than
ever. It was not a new thing that she should send in cakes of her own
making, but it was extraordinary that we should get these thoughtful
presents as often as once a fortnight, and it became usual to hear a boy
exclaim, either among a knot of fellows or to himself, 'By jingo, she is
a pretty girl!' on her passing out of the room, and sometimes entirely of
his own idea. I am persuaded that if she had consented to marry Boddy,
the boys would have been seriously disposed to conspire to jump up in the
church and forbid the banns. We should have preferred to hand her to the
junior usher, Catman, of whom the rumour ran in the school that he once
drank a bottle of wine and was sick after it, and he was therefore a weak
creature to our minds; the truth of the rumour being confirmed by his
pale complexion. That we would have handed our blooming princess to him
was full proof of our abhorrence of Boddy. I might have thought with the
other boys that she was growing prettier, only I never could imagine her