John Brown--or to be polite and
up-to-date--John Carew-Brown surveyed the pupils of Wygate School with a
fighting eye, which is to say, he considered them carefully with
regarded to their pugilistic abilities, and he decided very soon that he
"could make them all sing small."

Even upon that first day when he, a new boy, had been standing in view
of the whole school, his mind had chiefly been occupied in running over
the boys' obvious fighting qualities--tall, short, fat, thin, all sorts
and conditions of them were there.

The girls he had passed by with but slight notice; to him they were
absolutely valueless and uninteresting. Betty Bruce had certainly caught
his attention by her public punishment, and he had been taken aback by
that sharp little pinch of hers. Hitherto he had had nothing to do with
girls but he supposed immediately that that was their manner of
fighting, and he did not admire it.

Not many days later an opportunity occurred for him to defend his newly
adopted name. Truth to tell, he had been longing for such an occasion
from the day on which old Captain Carew had asked him to fight for his
name too.

He was in the playground, round by the school house, just where the
babies' end of the school room joined the cloak room, and school was
over for the day. Having a piece of chalk in one hand, and nothing
particular to do, he occupied a few minutes by writing upon the weather
boards of the cloak-room--"J. C. Brown, J. C. Brown, John C. Brown, John
C. Brown," and the hinting C. raised a small dispute in a circle of
onlooking boys and girls.

It was Peter Bailey who said, "John Clara Brown," and it was silly
little Jack Smith who said "John Codfish Brown."

A burst of laughter followed, and Peter Bailey and Jack Smith chased
each other down the playground, and in and out among the sapling clump
away at the end of it, where some shabby scrub and three gum trees grew.

When they came back, John Brown was still silently writing apparently
deaf to all the surmising going on around him.

Nellie Underwood said it was--"Crabby John Brown," and Arthur Smedley,
the school bully, said--"John Brown the clown."

Whereupon Brown sought out a clean weather-board a shade or so above his
head and wrote in bold letters.

"John Carew-Brown, Dene Hall, Willoughby," which made Bailey say--

"Hullo, he's got hold of Bruce's grandfather."

Cyril, who was one of the little circle of jesters, grew pink to the
tips