He put the highest mark of his favour upon the delighted Gus by
asking him to dinner--a very great honour, but a dreadful ordeal. Gus
was wonderfully nervous as he commenced his soup. How do I know? Well, I
had been asked, I believe, to give the bewildered Gus a little
countenance. Gus went home, a day or two later, to the bosom of his
family, where he was treated with the utmost honour. He redeemed the
watch from the jeweller, and fulfilled his own promise to that worthy
man. All through the holidays he basked in the smiles of his proud
father, and rode that gentleman's pedigree hack. Corker's highest mark
of appreciation was to give you a dinner; with Gus's father it was to
let you ride his own horse.
CHAPTER XXV
A LITTLE ROUGH JUSTICE
Quietly and without any fuss the few details were arranged, and next
morning four of us filtered down to the old milling ground, on whose
green sod so many wrongs had been righted in the old times, and where I
sincerely hoped Phil would yet redress, however imperfectly, another.
Of course, we all know fisticuffs are not what they were; for every
strenuous mill of to-day there used to be fifty in the old days, and the
green turf which formerly was the scene of terrific combats between
fellows of the Upper School now only quaked under the martial hoof of,
say, Rogers, the prize fag of Biffen's, and Poulett, the champion egg
poacher of Corker's, and other humble followers of the "fancy.
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