Bunny shook her head. "I wouldn't give you the time of day. All right, Skeeve, it's your money."

"It's ours," I declared. "We all earned it."

"Gleep!" my pet crowed, happy that we had made up.

"You were terrific, too," I told him. He jumped up to slime me with his long tongue. "Ugh, Gleep!"

"Gleep," he declared, and trotted off into the woods to find something to eat. Bunny and I grinned as he disappeared into the undergrowth.

"…It's decided, then," Jinetta was saying as we dropped back into the group. "Tomorrow we'll work on Cantrip. Once we're good at that, I wouldn't mind learning Tolk's anti-headache remedy."

"It's easy! It's easy!" the Canidian promised enthusiastically.

Even the old inn seemed to wear a halo of contentment. I wasn't even bothered by the wave of stale air that blew out in my face when I unspelled the main door.

"Come with me," I invited the students. "I have a surprise for you."

Murmuring with curiosity, they followed. I gestured for them to gather around the scarred and stained dining table.

"I assigned you a hard task. You not only rose to the occasion, but you threw in your own flourishes that made it more than a success. You worked together, and you played off each other's strengths. I'm proud of your progress, and I'm proud of you. So, let me add to the festivities a little." I produced the bag of money that Bunny had collected from Headman Flink. "Here's our reward. We get half, since I'm teaching you and Bunny is my support staff. But the rest should rightly be divided between all of you."

I dumped the shining stream of silver out onto the table top. The coins bounced and jingled and rolled around the wooden table top. When the last one vibrated to a ringing halt, I could have heard a fly cough in the big room. I looked up at my students. To my amazement, all of them were staring at me with expressions ranging from dismay to horror.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"We can't accept this, Master Skeeve," Tolk said.

"We don't deserve it," Bee added. "If it wasn't for you, we'd have fallen on our faces a bunch of times."

"But you didn't," I assured him. "All you needed was a little confidence. I did very little. It was your efforts. Take it."

"No!" they protested in unison, the Pervects loudest of all.

"Why not?" Bunny asked. She sorted the money into neat piles, a large one for us and small ones for each of them. "You earned it."

"We can't accept any money from you," Jinetta said, almost desperately. I was puzzled: a Pervect refusing to take money?

"It's apprentice wages," I said calmly. "Less than I'd accept for such a task, even at your level of experience. If you were my partners, you'd be entitled to equal shares. You did a good job. You should participate in the reward."

"No," Melvine said, crossing his little arms. "We won't accept it. Not a copper piece. Not a wooden nickel."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"We can't," Pologne insisted, her yellow eyes large with alarm. "Really. All we want from you is an education. Nothing else. And we'll have to ask you to take that as our final word."

They nodded in unison. I shrugged.

They seemed to be more in accord than they had been at any time before, appearing to have achieved a mutual understanding on the long walk home.

"Well, if that's what you want," I said, "but I promise you would still get the same education from me whether you accept this reward or not."

"No!" Tolk said. "You can't force us to take it."

"Force you?" Freezia snorted. "You wanted to take it. I could see it in your eyes."

"That's not true," the Canidian howled. "How about you? Perverts are greedy. Everyone knows it. Why don't you just take your shares? You know you want to."

"You liar," Jinetta said. "And that's Pervect!"

"In your dreams! Eating food that smells like garbage. That's perverted!"

"Yeah, you're such hypocrites," Melvine sneered. "Slurping down purple worms then it's 'oh, dear, look at that bug! It might crawl on me!'"

"You should talk, Mr. Fearless," Bee said. "What was with you when we first got to Humulus? You're the most powerful of us after Master Skeeve, and you kept bawling like, well, a baby!"

"I had Manticore nightmares as a kid, okay?" Melvine snarled.

"Back off him," Pologne said, her voice rising to a shriek. "Where were you when we were working on containing that beast? Running away yourself?"

Bee's face went pale under its freckles. "With respect, ma'am, I was following Master Skeeve's orders."

"You mean, because you couldn't do magik, right? Spellfree freak!"

I opened my mouth to say that Aahz had been without his magik for a few years, that he was no less formidable without it, but that wouldn't have made Pologne respect him or Bee any more than she did.

"You were sure buddying up with him before," Freezia said scornfully.

"How dare you suggest I'd make friends with a Klahd?"

"Hey," I protested.

In the blink of an eye, the good mood had been shattered. I didn't know how I had managed to ruin it, but the camaraderie had evaporated the moment I had emptied those coins out on the table. Distrust ran wild throughout the class, even between the Pervects.

"What is going on here?" Bunny asked. "Ten minutes ago you were friends. What happened."

They all turned to us, as if caught in the act.

"Oh, nothing," Pologne said, too brightly.

"Look at the time!" Jinetta said hastily. "Dinner soon! We'll go out and get supplies. I hope they still have some fresh sgarnwalds in the market at this hour, don't you, Freezia?"

"Let me pitch in," Melvine insisted, digging in his pocket for coins.

"And me, too," Tolk said. Bee opened his threadbare belt pouch and produced a couple of coppers, which he placed in Jinetta's palm.

"It's only right," Freezia explained to me and Bunny. "Whenever I stay with friends I always buy groceries. I almost never eat up their food. And we know what you like, too. It'll be good. I promise. Bye!"

Before I could reply, the three Pervects disappeared.

"Something is up," Bunny said. She turned to the three male students. "What is going on?"

"Nothing," Melvine said hastily. "Boy, I could sure use a nap." He vanished, the displaced air BAMFig behind him.

"Gotta go walk myself," Tolk added. He scampered out of the door.

"I, uh," Bee began then turned and quick-marched after the Canidian without finishing his sentence.

Bunny, Gleep and I were left alone in the big room.

"Something strange is going on here," Bunny said.

"I think they're just tired," I replied. "Don't be so suspicious."

Bunny narrowed an eye. ''You're too trusting. Tolk was right: Pervects never turn down free money. That's more than strange."

I sighed. "They're not all the same as Aahz. I found that out when I was on Perv. Maybe there is some code among MIP students not to take gifts from their teacher. Probably one of Professor Maguffin's rules. They're always quoting him."

"I don't know," Bunny said, tapping her foot on the floor impatiently. "I'm going to keep my eye on them. All of them."

"Gleep!" Gleep announced.

"Yes," I agreed, patting my pet on the head. "Me, too."

If I had thought the dinner at which I made them switch main courses was awkward, this one deserved a medal for going above and beyond the call of gut-twisting, in more ways than one. Almost as if they wanted to taunt the others, the Pervects, who sat together at one end of the big table, made a point of serving their food in small bites, making sure to give everyone a good look at each slimy, purple pseudopod dripping off the spoon. As promised, the food they brought back for the rest of us was fine, even delicious, though it was harder to enjoy with the nauseating whiff of Pervish cooking overwhelming us.