his eye a
bright green and yellow, and his under lip about twice its ordinary
thickness, took his accustomed place in the arithmetic class of the
Fourth Junior.

"Why, Greenfield," exclaimed Mr Rastle, when in due time the young
hero's turn came to stand up and answer a question, "what have you been
doing to yourself?"

"Nothing, sir," remarked Stephen, mildly.

"How did you come by that black eye?" asked the master.

"Fighting, sir," said Stephen, rather pompously.

"Ah! what did you say forty-eight sixths was equal to?"

This was Mr Rastle's way. He very rarely hauled a boy over the coals
before the whole class.

But after the lesson he beckoned Stephen into his study.

"I'm afraid you got the worst of that fight," he said.

Stephen, who by this time knew Mr Rastle too well to be afraid of him,
and too well, also, not to be quite frank with him, answered meekly,
"The fellow was bigger than me."

"I should guess that by the state of your face. Now, I don't want to
know what the fight was about, though I dare say you'd like to tell me
[Stephen was boiling to tell him]. You small boys have such peculiar
reasons for fighting, you know, no one can understand them."

"But this was because--"

"Hush! Didn't I tell you I won't hear what it was about, sir!" said Mr
Rastle, sharply. "Did you shake hands afterwards?"

"No, I didn't, _and I won't_!" exclaimed Stephen, forgetting, in his
indignation, to whom he was speaking.

"Then," said Mr Rastle, quietly, "write me out one hundred lines of
Caesar, Greenfield; and when you have recollected how to behave
yourself, we will talk more about this. You can go."

Mr Rastle _was_ a queer man; he never took things as one expected.
When Stephen expected him to be furious he was as mild as a lamb. There
was no making him out.

But this was certain: Stephen left his room a good deal more crestfallen
than he entered it. He had hoped to win Mr Rastle's sympathy and
admiration by an account of his grievances, and, instead of that, he was
sent off in disgrace, with an imposition for being rude, and feeling
anything but a hero.

Even the applause of his friends failed to console him quite. Besides,
his head ached badly, and the bruise on his cheek, which he had scarcely
felt among his other wounds, now began to swell and grow painful.
Altogether, he was in the wars.

He was groaning over his imposition late that evening in the class-room,
feeling in dreadful dump