The Project Gutenberg EBook of Haviland's Chum, by Bertram Mitford

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Title: Haviland's Chum

Author: Bertram Mitford

Release Date: June 20, 2010 [EBook #32928]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAVILAND'S CHUM ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Haviland's Chum, by Bertram Mitford.

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HAVILAND'S CHUM, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE NEW BOY.

"Hi! Blacky! Here--hold hard. D'you hear, Snowball?"

The last peremptorily. He thus addressed, paused, turned, and eyed
somewhat doubtfully, not without a tinge of apprehension, the group of
boys who thus hailed him.

"What's your name?" pursued the latter, "Caesar, Pompey, Snowball--
what?"

"Or Uncle Tom?" came another suggestion.

"I--new boy," was the response.

"New boy! Ugh!" jeered one fellow. "Time I left if they are going to
take niggers here. What's your name, sir--didn't you hear me ask?"

"Mpukuza."

"Pookoo--how much?"

For answer the other merely emitted a click, which might have conveyed
contempt, disgust, defiance, or a little of all three. He was an
African lad of about fifteen, straight and lithe and well-formed, and
his skin was of a rich copper brown. But there was a clean-cut look
about the set of his head, and an almost entire absence of negro
development of nose and lips, which seemed to point to the fact that it
was with no inferior race aboriginal to the dark continent that he owned
nationality.

Now a hoot was raised among the group, and there was a tendency to
hustle this very unwonted specimen of a new boy. He, however, took it
good-humouredly, exhibiting a magnificent set of teeth in a tolerant
grin. But the last speaker, a biggish, thick-set fellow who was
something of a bully, was not inclined to let him down so easily.

"Take off your hat, sir!" he cried, knocking it off the other's head, to
a distance of some yards. "Now, Mr Woollyhead, perhaps you'll answer
my question and tell us your name, or I shall have to see if some