of
his pocket-knife.

"You must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear," argued
Dudley, accepting.

"Didn't buy it."

"Do you mean to say you stole it?"

"Yes."

"You're a thief," denounced Dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away a
pip.

"I know it. So are you."

"No, I'm not."

"What's the good of talking nonsense. You robbed an orchard only last
Wednesday at Mill Hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache."

"That isn't stealing."

"What is it?"

"It isn't the same thing."

"What's the difference?"

And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference. "Stealing is
stealing," he would have it, "whether you take it off a tree or out of a
basket. You're a thief, Dudley; so am I. Anybody else say a piece?"

The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. We all had
a piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so. It did
not agitate him in the least.

To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand me,
and sometimes from him I received assistance and sometimes confusion.
The yearly examination was approaching. My father and mother said
nothing, but I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the result; my
father, to see how much I had accomplished; my mother, how much I had
endeavoured. I had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing that prizes
depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make others
believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of school.

"Are you going in for anything, Dan?" I asked him. We were discussing
the subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.

I knew the question absurd. I asked it of him because I wanted him to
ask it of me.

"They're not giving away anything I particularly want," murmured Dan, in
his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes are, it
must be confessed, not worth their cost.

"You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?" he asked next, as I
expected.

"I mean to have a shot at the History," I admitted. "Wish I was better
at dates."

"It's always two-thirds dates," Dan assured me, to my discouragement.
"Old Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date that
chap Raleigh was born."

"I've prayed so hard that I may win the History prize," I explained to
him. I never felt shy with Dan. He never laughed at me.

"You oughtn't to have done that," he said. I stared. "It isn't fair to
the other fellows. That won't be you