playground after school with fruit and sweets and suchlike, was owed by me seven shillings and fourpence, and she wouldn't sell anything more to me, and asked me rather often to pay the money. I told her that all would be paid sooner or later, and she seemed inclined not to believe it. Other debts were one and six owed to Corkey minimus for a mouse that he said was going to have young mice, but it didn't, and he had consented to take ninepence owing to being mistaken. Tin Lin Chow, the Chinese boy, was owed four shillings and threepence for a charm. It was a good enough charm, made of ivory and carved into a very hideous face. All the same, it never had done me much good, for here I was bankrupted six months after buying it, and the charm itself not even paid for.
There was a lot of other small debts—some merely a question of pens and caterpillars; but they all mounted up, and so I felt something must be done, because being in such a beastly mess kept me awake a good deal at night thinking what to do.
Therefore I went to Gideon, who is a Jew, and very rich, and well known to lend money at interest. He is first in the whole school for arithmetic, and his father is a diamond merchant and a banker, and many other things that bring in enormous sums of money. Gideon has no side, and he is known to be absolutely fair and kind even to the smallest kids. So I went to him and I said—
"Please, Gideon, if it won't be troubling you, I should like to speak to you about my affairs. I am very hard up, in fact, and fellows are being rather beastly about money I owe them."
"I'm afraid I can't finance you, Bannister," said Gideon awfully kindly. "My money's all out at interest just now, and, as a matter of fact, I'm rather funky about some of it."
"I don't want you to finance me," I said; "and that would be jolly poor fun for you anyway, because I've got nothing, and never shall have in this world, as far as I can see. I only want you to advise me. I'm fourteen and three-quarters, and when I was twelve and a half my father got into pretty much the same mess that I'm in now; and he got out again with ease, and even had champagne afterwards, by the simple plan of being bankrupt."
"It's not always an honourable thing—I warn you of that," said Gideon.
"I'm sure it was perfectly honourable in my father's case," I said, "because he's a frightfully honourable man. And I am honourable, too, and want to do what is right and proper as soon as possible."
"Why don't you write to your father?" asked Gideon.
"Because he once warned me—when he was being bankrupted, in fact—that if ever I owed any man a farthing he would break my neck, and my mother said at the same time—blubbing into a handkerchief as she said it—that she would rather see me in my coffin than in the bankruptcy court. All the same, they both cheered up like anything after it was all over, and father said he should not hesitate to go through it all again if necessary; but, still, I wouldn't for the world tell them what I've done. In fact, they think that I have money in hand and subscribe to the chapel offertories, and do all sorts of good with my ten bob a term; whereas the truth is that I have to pay it all away instantly on the first day of the term, and have had to ever since two terms after I first came."
"What you must do, then, is to go bankrupt," said Gideon thoughtfully.
"Yes," I said, "that's just the whole thing. How do you begin?"
"Generally other people begin," said Gideon. "Creditors, as a rule, do what they think will pay them best. Sometimes they will show great patience, if they think it is worth while, and sometimes they won't. My father has told me about these things. He has had to bankrupt a few people in his time, though he's always very sorry to do it."
"In my case nobody will show patience, because it's gone on too long," I said. "In fact, the only one who has got anything out of me for three terms is Steggles, who has taken my bat."
"He has foreclosed on a mortgage. He was quite within his rights for once," said Gideon, who rather hated Steggles, because Steggles always called him 'Shylock junior.'
"To begin," continued Gideon, "two things generally happen, I believe; there is a meeting of creditors, and soon afterwards the bailiffs come in."
"I remember my father mentioning bailiffs wildly to my mother," I said, "but I don't think they ever came in; if they did, I never saw them."
"Then no doubt the meeting of creditors decided against it; and a meeting of creditors is what you'd better have," declared Gideon. "Tell everybody you owe money to that there is to be a meeting in the gym. on Thursday evening to go into the affair. I will be there, if you like, as I understand these things pretty well."
I thanked Gideon very much indeed and asked him if he could tell what happened next after the meeting.
"The claims are put in against you," he explained, "and then you say what you've got to say, and give a reason why you can't pay; and then your assets are stated."
"What are assets?" I asked.
"What you've got to pay with, or what you hope to have in course of time."
"I've got nothing at all," I said, "and never shall have until I'm old enough to go into an office and earn money."
"Then the assets will be nil," said Gideon. "But they can't be absolutely nil in your case. For instance, you have a watch, and you have that Chinese charm you bought from Tin Lin Chow and various other things, including the green lizard you found on the common last Saturday, if it's still alive."
"I can't give up the watch," I said, "it isn't mine. It's only lent to me by my mother. The lizard died yesterday, I'm sorry to say, owing to not liking captivity."
"Well, at any rate, the thing is to declare something in the pound," Gideon told me.
"It may be," I said, "but first get your pound. You can't declare anything in the pound if you haven't got a pound. At least, I don't see how."
He seemed doubtful about that and changed the subject.
"Anyway, I'll be at the meeting of creditors," he promised; and I felt sure he would be, because Gideon was never known to lie.
II
A good deal happened before the meeting of creditors. Among other things I went down three places in my form, because my mind was so much occupied with going bankrupt; and I also got into a beast of a row with the Doctor, which was serious, and might have been still more serious if he had insisted on knowing the truth. It was at a very favourite lesson of the Doctor's—namely, the Scripture lesson, and, as a rule, he simply takes the top of the class and leaves the bottom pretty much alone, because at the top are Macmullen and Richmond and Prodgers, all fliers at Scripture, and their answers give the Doctor great pleasure; and at the bottom are me and Willson minor and West and others, and our answers don't give him any pleasure at all. But sometimes he pounces down upon us with a sudden question, to see if we are attending; and he pounced down upon me, to see if I was attending, and I was not, because my mind was full of the meeting of creditors, who were more important to me for the minute than the people in the Old Testament.
So when the Doctor suddenly said, "Tell us what you know of Gideon, Bannister, if you please," I clean forgot there was more than one Gideon, and said—
"Gideon is an awfully decent sort, sir, and he has advised me to offer something in the pound."
Naturally the Doctor did not like this. In fact, he liked it so little that he made me go straight out of the class and wait for him in his study. Then he caned me for insolence, combined with irreverence,
