days; though the weather was bad and there was a
long while to wait before there could be much pleasure in out-door
sports. But the spring came at last with its pear and apple blossom,
the hops began to run up the poles, May and June succeeded, and glided
on so that I could hardly believe it when the midsummer holidays came
without my feeling that I had advanced much in the past six months.

I suppose I had, for I had worked hard, and the letter I bore home from
the Doctor quite satisfied my mother who afterwards informed me in
confidence that my uncle was greatly pleased.

Six weeks' holidays were before me, but, before they were at an end, I
was beginning to get weary, and longing for the day to come when my new
things were brought home ready to try on, pack up, and return to school.

To my studies and interviews with the masters?

Oh, no! nothing of the kind; but to where there were woods and ponds,
and the General's cob for my riding lessons, and the cricket-field.

I'm afraid my mother must have thought me careless and unloving. I hope
I was not, in my eagerness to get back to Tom Mercer, who made my school
life most interesting by his quaintness. For I was always ready to
enter into his projects, some of which were as amusing as they were new.

I had seen little of my uncle when I was home last, but he wrote to me
twice--stern, military-toned letters, each of which was quite a despatch
in itself. In these he laid down the law to me, giving me the best of
advice, but it was all very Spartan-like. He insisted above all things
upon my recollecting that I was to be a soldier, and that a soldier was
always a gentleman and a man of honour, and each time he finished his
letter in these words,--

"Never tell a lie, Frank; never do a dirty action; keep yourself smart
and clean; and, by the way, I send you a sovereign to spend in trash."

"Only wish I had such an uncle," Tom Mercer used to say. "My father
would send me money if he could spare it, but he says his patients won't
pay. They're civil enough when they're ill, but when he has wound up
their clocks, and set them going again, they're as disagreeable as can
be if he wants his bill."

This was after I had gone back from the midsummer holidays.

"Did you ask him for money, then?"

"Yes, and he said that if he wrote at midsummer and asked for payment,
the farmers told him they'd pay after harvest, and if he wanted it after
harvest, they said they'd pay