Doe’s parted lips came suddenly together, his face got red, and he moved impatiently as he sat.  But he said nothing, either because the words would not come, or lest something more unmanly should.

“Ray,” pursued the tormentor, “I think that friend of yours is going to blub.”

Doe left his seat, and stood upon his feet, his lips set in one firm line.  He tossed his hair off his forehead, and, keeping his face averted from our gaze lest we should detect any moisture about the eyes, opened a desk, and selected the books he would require.  They were books over which he had scrawled with flourishes: 

          “Mr. Edgar Gray Doe, Esq.,”
          “E.  Gray Doe, M.A.,”
          “Rev. Edgar G. Doe, D.D.,”
          “E.  G. Doe, Physician and Surgeon,”

and, when he had placed them on his arm, he walked towards the door with his face still turned away from us.

“Oh, don’t go, Doe.  Don’t be a sloppy ass,” I said, feeling that I had been fairly trapped into deserting a fellow-victim, and backing our common tyrant.

My appeal Doe treated as though he had not heard it; and Penny, certain that his victory was won, and that he had no further need of my support, kicked it away with the sneer:  “Hit Doe, and Ray’s bruised!  What a David and Jonathan we’re going to be!  How we agree like steak and kidney!...  Rather a nice expression, that.”

Penny’s commentary was thus turned inwards upon himself, in an affectionate criticism of his vocabulary, to show the utter detachment of his interest from the pathetic exit of Edgar Doe.  For now Doe had reached the door, which he opened, passed, and slammed.  In a twinkling I had opened it again, and was looking down the corridor.  There was no sign of my friend anywhere.  The moment he had slammed the door he must have run.

I returned to the preparation room, and Penny sighed, as much as to say:  “What a pity little boys are so petulant and quarrelsome.”  But the victory was his, as it always was, and he could think of other things.  There was a clock on the wall behind him, but, too comfortable to turn his head, he asked me: 

“What’s the beastly?”

I glanced at the clock, and intimated, sulkily enough, that the beastly was twenty minutes past nine.  He groaned.

“Oh!  Ah!  An hour’s sweat with Radley.  Oh, hang!  Blow!  Damn!”

He stood up, stretched himself, yawned, apologised, got his books, and occasionally tossed a remark to me, as if he were quite unaware that I was not only trying to sulk, but also badly wanted him to know it.  As I looked for my books, I sought for the rudest and most painful insult I could offer him.  My duty to Doe demanded that it should be something quite uncommon.  And from a really fine selection I had just chosen:  “You’re the biggest liar I’ve ever met, and, for all I know, you’re as big a thief,” when I turned round and found he was gone.  Pennybet always left the field as its master.