"Oscar will wonder," said Bertie; and he gave the black gelding a
triumphant touch with the whip.

You see, it was Oscar that had made them run go; or, rather, it was Duty
and Fate walking in Oscar's displeasing likeness. Nothing easier,
nothing more reasonable, than to see the tutor and tell him they should
not need him to-day. But that would have spoiled everything. They did
not know it, but deep in their childlike hearts was a delicious sense
that in thus unaccountably disappearing they had won a great game, had
got away ahead of Duty and Fate. After all it did bear some resemblance
to an escape from justice. .

Could he have known this, Oscar would have felt more superior than ever.
Punctually at the hour agreed, ten o'clock he rapped at Billy's door and
stood waiting, his leather wallet of notes nipped safe between elbow and
ribs. Then he knocked again. Then he tried the door, and as it was
open, he walked deferentially into the sitting room. Sonorous snores
came from one of the bedrooms. Oscar peered in and saw John; but he saw
no Billy in the other bed. Then, always deferential, he sat down in the
sitting room and watched a couple of prettily striped coats hanging in a
half-open closet.

At that moment the black gelding was flirtatiously crossing the
drawbridge over the Charles on the Allston Road. The gelding knew the
clank of those suspending chains and the slight unsteadiness of the
meeting halves of the bridge as well as it knew oats. But it could not
enjoy its own entirely premeditated surprise quite so much as Bertie and
Billy were enjoying their entirely unpremeditated flight from Oscar. The
wind rippled on the water; down at the boat-house Smith was helping some