Oh how cruel everything was to him! Five pounds--he wondered whether Montagu would lend it him, or any other boy?
But then it was late in the quarter, and all the boys would have spent the money they brought with them from home.

There was no chance of any one having five pounds, and to a master he _dare_ not apply, not even to Mr.Rose.The offence was too serious to be overlooked, and if noticed at all, he fancied that, after his other delinquencies, it _must_, as a matter of notoriety, be visited with expulsion.

He could not face that bitter thought; he could not thus bring open disgrace upon his father's and his brother's name; this was the fear which kept recurring to him with dreadful iteration.
By the bye, he remembered that if he had continued captain of the school eleven, he would have had easy command of the money by being treasurer of the cricket subscriptions.

But at Vernon's death he lost all interest in cricket for a time, and had thrown up his office, to which Montagu had been elected by the general suffrage.
He wondered whether there was as much as five pounds of the cricketing-money left?
He knew that the box which contained it was in Montagu's study, and he also knew where the key was kept.

It was merely a feeling of curiosity--he would go and look.
All this passed through Eric's mind as he sat in his study after Billy had gone.