Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School and Billy Bunter's ... by Frank Richards Page B

biggest armchair in the junior day-room, and blinked at
the wrathful quintette, with a dolorous blink through his big spectacles.
Perhaps he had forgotten the cake in the box-room. Much had happened since
then—to Bunter. The Famous Five remembered it—as they had come in to tea, with
healthy youthful appetites, and that cake in the parcel from Wharton Lodge had
been intended to figure as the Pièce-de-résistance at tea in No. 1 Study.
There was no hope of recovering that cake—indeed, an X-ray outfit would have
been required to track it. But there was solace in bumping the grub-raider of
the Remove: and Harry Wharton and Co. were prepared to roll Bunter out of the
armchair, and bump him on the day-room floor, not once but many times.
But they paused.
Something unusual in Bunter’s aspect struck them. His look was woebegone. He
blinked at them dismally, dolefully, dispiritedly. He seemed to be plunged in
the very depths of pessimism. He did not seem to realise his danger—or even to
observe that the chums of the Remove were wrathy. He just blinked at them.
“Hold on!” said Harry. “Quelch has been on his track. If the fat villain has
just had six from Quelch—!”
“Whopped?” demanded Bob Cherry.
“Eh! No!” mumbled Bunter. “Worse than that! I say, you fellows, it’s awful.”
“Sent up to the Head?” asked Frank Nugent. And wrath died out of five faces. A
fellow sent up to the Head was not a proper object for bumping or scalping.
“Worse than that!” groaned Bunter.
“Worse?” exclaimed Johnny Bull, blankly.
“Is the worsefulness terrific?” asked Hurree Jamset Ram Singh.
A minute ago, the Famous Five had been prepared to collar Bunter, and reduce
him to a state of breathless wreckage. Now they gave him sympathetic looks. The
cake missing from No. 1 Study was a trifle light as air, in comparison with the
deep woe that seemed to overwhelm the unfortunate Owl.
“Not the sack, surely?” exclaimed Harry Wharton. That, so far as he knew, was
the only thing worse than being sent up to the Head.
“You’re not bunked, old fat man?” exclaimed Bob. “As bad as that?”
“Well, not quite so bad as that,” mumbled Bunter. “But it comes to the same
thing. I’ve got to leave at the end of the term, unless—.”
“Unless what?”
“Unless Quelch gets over his prejudice against me, and does me justice,” said
Bunter, dismally. “That’s not very likely, is it? I—I say, you fellows, do you
think Quelch is quite right in his head?”
“Wha-a-at!”
“Well, it sounded to me like crackers, the way he talked to me in his study,”
said Bunter. “He said I was lazy, idle, greedy, undutiful, untruthful—me, you
know! Not one of you fellows—I could understand that. But me!”
“Oh, my hat.”
“Of course, I’ve never had justice here,” said Bunter. “I don’t expect it.
You’ve never done me justice, Wharton, as captain of the form—you haven’t
played me in a single cricket match—.”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“But a fellow has a right to expect justice from his form-master,” said Bunter.
“I don’t get it from Quelch. He says I’m slack in class, and slack at games.”
“So you are!” said Johnny Bull.
“The slackfulness is terrific, my esteemed fat Bunter.”
“He’s going to give me a bad report, and advise my pater to take me away,”
groaned Bunter. “Fancy what you’d feel like, you fellows, if I didn’t come back
next term! Think of that!”
“Oh!” gasped the five.
“And that’s what it’s coming to, unless I can get round Quelch somehow,” said
Bunter. “I’ve been sitting here thinking it over, and—and it’s awful. I don’t
want to leave Greyfriars. Think how the fellows would miss me!”
“Oh!” gasped the five, again. Bunter really seemed to be taking their breath
away.
“And—and—and—you fellows remember once there was a spot of trouble, and the
pater thought of taking me away? Well, he said that if I left Greyfriars, he
shouldn’t think of