sed by the conversation I had overheard.

And indeed I never was quite clear as to why, at the tender and
guileless age of twelve, I was abruptly sent away from my native village
of Brownstroke, to that select and popular "Academy for Backward and
Troublesome Young Gentlemen," (so the advertisement ran), known as
Stonebridge House, in the neighbourhood of Cliffshire.

Other people appeared to divine the reason, and Mrs Hudson shook her
head and wiped her eyes when I consulted her on the subject. It was
queer. "I must be a very backward boy," thought I to myself, "for try
as I will, I don't see it."

You must know I was an orphan. I never could recollect my mother--nor
could Mrs Hudson. As to my father, all I could recall of him was that
he had bushy eyebrows, and used to tell me some most wonderful stories
about lions and tigers and other beasts of prey, and used now and then
to show me my mother's likeness in a locket that hung on his watch-
chain. They were both dead, and so I came to live with my uncle. Now,
I could hardly tell why, but it never seemed to me as if my uncle
appeared to regard it as a privilege to have me to take care of. He
didn't whack me as some fellows' uncles do, nor did he particularly
interfere with my concerns, as the manner of other uncles (so I am
told), is. He just took as little notice as possible of me, and as long
as I went regularly to Mrs Wren's grammar-school in the village, and as
long as Mrs Hudson kept my garments in proper order, and as long as I
showed up duly on state occasions, and didn't bring more than a square
inch of clay on each heel (there was a natural affinity between clay and
my heels), into his drawing-room, he scarcely seemed to be aware that
his house possessed such a treasure as an only nephew.

The part of my life I liked least was the grammar-school. That was a
horrid place. Mrs Wren was a good old soul, who spent one half of her
time looking over her spectacles, and the other half under them, for
something she never found. We big boys--for twelve is a good age for a
dame's grammar-school--we didn't exactly get on at old Jenny Wren's, as
she was called. For we gradually discovered we knew almost as much as
she did herself, and it dawned on us by degrees that somehow she didn't
know how to keep us in order. The consequence was, one or two boys,
especially Jimmy Bates, the parish clerk's son, and Joe Bobbins, the
Italian oil and colourman's son, didn