CHAPTER TWENTY.
HOW COOTE COMES OUT AS A SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER.
It would have been well for Heathcote if he had acted on the impulse of the moment, and made it up with Dick that same evening.
Dick had come back from his boating expedition better disposed towards his lieutenant than he had been for a long time.

He had come determined to befriend him, and rescue him from his enemies, and set him up upon his feet.

He had come, reproaching himself with his former neglect, and convinced that Georgie's fate was in his hands for good or evil; and that being so, he had determined to make a good job of his friend and turn him out a credit to Templeton.
But in all this modest programme it had never occurred to him that Georgie would be anything but delighted to be taken in hand and made a good job of.
Therefore, when in the fulness of his benevolence he had found his friend out immediately on his return, and been repulsed for his pains, Dick felt "gravelled." All his nice little plan of campaign fell through.

It was no use routing the Den, and putting Pledge and the "Sociables" to shame, when Georgie wouldn't be made a good job of.

And so Dick, with some dismay and considerable loss to his self-conceit, had to order a retreat and consider whether the war was worth going on with under the circumstances.
He therefore did not meet Heathcote half-way, and curled himself up into bed, sorely perplexed, sorely crest-fallen, and sorely out of love with the world at large.
No news spreads so fast as the news of a quarrel, and before school was well launched next morning the noise of a "row" between Dick and Heathcote ran through Templeton from end to end.
The Den heard it, and hoped there would be a fight.