"So you've had no sport, Mr Rebble?" the Doctor was saying.

"No, sir, none. The wind was in the wrong quarter again."

"Aha!" said the Doctor, as he caught sight of us; "our new young friend,
Burr junior. My dears, this is our new student. Burr junior, my wife
and daughters."

We both took off our caps.

"Friends already, eh?" said the Doctor. "History repeats itself, the
modern based upon the classic. Quite a young Pylades and Orestes.
Well, Burr, have you made acquaintance with all your schoolfellows?"

I turned scarlet, and was at a loss as to what to say. But there was no
occasion for me to feel troubled--the Doctor did not want an answer. He
nodded pleasantly, the ladies bowed and passed on with him, while Mercer
hurried me away.

"What a game!" he said; "and you've only made friends with one. I say,
poor old Reb's been fishing all day again for roach, and never caught
one. He never does. I wish he'd had the ducking instead of me."

"Nonsense!" I said. "You don't."

"Oh, but I just do," he said. "I say, let's go round and see cook."

"What for?"

"To ask her to dry our clothes for us. This way." He ran off, and I
followed him, to pass through a gate into a paved yard, across which was
a sloping-roofed building, at the side of the long schoolroom.

Mercer tapped at a door, and a sharp voice shouted,--

"Come in!"

"Mustn't. Forbidden," said Mercer to me, and he knocked again.

"Don't want any!" shouted the same voice, and a big, sour-looking,
dark-faced woman came to the door.

"Oh, it's you, is it, Master Mercer? What do you want?"

"I say, Cookie, this is the new boy."

"Nice pair of you, I'll be bound," she said roughly.

"We've been out, and had an accident, and tumbled into a pond."

"Serve you both right. Wonder you weren't both drowned," she said
sharply.

"Don't tell anybody," continued Mercer, in no wise alarmed. "We nearly
were, only Jem Roff at Dawson's farm came and pulled us out."

"Oh, my dear bairns," cried the woman, with her face and voice changing,
"what would your poor mammas have said?"

"It's all right, though," said Mercer, "only our things are soaked. Do
have 'em down and dried for us by the morning."

"Why, of course I will, my dears."

"And, Cookie, we haven't had any dinner, and it's only bread and butter
and milk and water."

"Yes; coming," cried the woman, as a door was heard to open, and a voice
to call.

"Go along," she said. "The