't behave very well. I was sorry
to see it, and always told them so.

They got us other boys into all sorts of scrapes and trouble. One day
they would hide poor Jenny's spectacles, and then when search was made
the lost treasure would be found in some one else's desk. Or they would
tie cotton reels on the four feet and tail of the old tabby cat, and
launch her, with a horrid clatter, right into the middle of the room,
just as I or one of the others happened to be scampering out. Or they
would turn the little boys' forms upside down, and compel them with
terrible threats to sit on the iron feet, and then in the middle of the
class "sneak" about them.

Poor Jenny couldn't manage the school at all, with such boys as Jimmy
Bates and Joe Bobbins in it. Up to boys of ten she was all right; but
over ten she was all at sea.

However, she worked patiently on, and taught us all she could, and once
or twice gave us a horrible fright by calling up at our houses, and
reporting progress there (Mrs Hudson always received her when she came
up to my uncle's). And for all I know I might be at Jenny Wren's school
still if a tremendous event hadn't happened in our village, which
utterly upset the oldest established customs of Brownstroke.

We grammar-school boys never "hit" it exactly with the other town boys.
Either they were jealous of us or we were jealous of them. I don't
know, but we hated the town boys, and they hated us.

Once or twice we had come into collision, though they always got the
best of it. One winter they snowballed us to such a pitch that as long
as the snow was on the ground a lot of the little kids would no more
venture to school alone than a sane man would step over the side of a
balloon.

Another time they lined the street down both sides, and laughed and
pointed at us as we walked to school. That was far worse than
snowballs, even with stones in them. You should have seen us, with pale
faces and hurried steps, making our way amid the jeers and gibes of our
tormentors--some of the little ones blubbering, one or two of the bigger
ones looking hardly comfortable, and a few of the biggest inwardly
ruminating when and how it would best be possible to kill that Runnit
the news-boy, or Hodge the cow-boy!

These and many other torments and terrors we "Jenny Wrenites" had
endured at the hands of our enemies the town boys, on the whole
patiently. In process of time they got tired of one sort of torment,
a