I have been thinking it over.

I don't want Mather to suspect anything, so I will go out at the back gate with you, as if I was going to walk part of the way home with you, and then we will go round to the front door and speak to Porson." The master was sitting on a low seat in the window of his study.

Hearing footsteps coming up from the front gate he looked round.
"Do you want to speak to me, boys ?" he asked in some surprise through the open window.

"What makes you come round the front way ?" "We want to see you privately, sir," Ripon said.
"Very well, boys, I will open the door for you.
"Now, what is it ?" he asked as the boys followed him into the study.
"Well, sir, it may be nothing, I am sure I hope so," Ripon said, "but Sankey and I thought you ought to know and then it will be off our minds, and you can do as you like about it.

Now, Sankey, tell what you knew first, then I will tell what Mother Brown said to me on Wednesday." Ned told the story in the same words in which he had related it to Ripon; and Ripon then detailed his conversation with the cake woman, and her threats of reporting Mather on Saturday were the debt not paid.