Talbot Baines Reed

“ Wraysford, however, was in no laughing mood, and went off to his study in great perturbation.
He could not for a moment believe that his friend could be guilty of such a dishonourable act as stealing an examination paper, and his impulse was to go at once to Oliver’s study and get the suspicions of the Fifth laid there and then. But the fear of seeming in the least degree to join in those suspicions kept him back. He tried to laugh the thing to scorn inwardly, and called himself a villain and a traitor twenty times for admitting even the shadow of a doubt into his own mind. ”

“ Boys don’t like this. It irritates them to see their praise or blame made little of; and for this reason, if for no other, Oliver would hardly have been a favourite.
But there was another reason. Now that the Fifth found their faith in Greenfield senior rudely dashed to the ground, they were not slow to recall the unpleasant incidents of last term, when, by refusing to thrash Loman, he had discredited the whole Form, and laid himself under the suspicion of cowardice. ”

“ Most of the fellows had at the time of the Nightingale examination either forgotten, or forgiven, or repented of their suspicions, and, indeed, by his challenge to Loman the previous Saturday Oliver had been considered quite to have redeemed his reputation in this respect. But now it all came up again. A fellow who would do a cowardly deed at one time could do a mean one at another. ”