n to build us a
bridge. He wrote splendid letters, and this was one of his very best.
He said that if the town council laughed at the notion of building a
bridge for boys, they must remember that the Boys of to-day were the
Men of to-morrow (which we all thought a grand sentence, though
MacDonald, a very accurate-minded fellow, said it would really be some
years before most of us were grown up). Then Weston called us the
Rising Generation, and showed that, in all probability, the Prime
Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Primate of the years to come now played
"all unconscious of their future fame" in the classic fields that lay
beyond the water, and promised that in the hours of our coming
greatness we would look back with gratitude to the munificence of our
native city. He put lots of Latin in, and ended with some Latin verses
of his own, in which he made the Goddess of the Stream plead for us as
her sons. By the stream he meant the canal, for we had no river, which
of course Weston couldn't help.

How we watched for the next week's paper! But it wasn't in. They never
did put his things in, which mortified him sadly. His greatest
ambition was to get something of his own invention printed. Johnson
said he believed it was because Weston always put something personal
in the things he wrote. He was very sarcastic, and couldn't help
making fun of people.

It was all the kinder of Weston to do his best about the bridge,
because he was not much of a cricketer himself. He said he was too
short-sighted, and that it suited him better to poke in the hedges for
beetles. He had a splendid collection of insects. Bustard used to say
that he poked with his nose, as if he were an insect himself, and it
was a proboscis but he said too that his father said it was a pleasure
to see Weston make a section of anything, and prepare objects for the
microscope. His fingers were as clever as his tongue.

It was not long after Rupert got his new shirt and cap that a very sad
thing happened.

We were playing cricket one day as usual. It was very hot, and I was
mixing some lemon-kali at the canal, and holding up the mug to tempt
Weston over, who was on the other side with his proboscis among the
water-plants collecting larvae. Rupert was batting, and a new fellow,
who bowled much more swiftly than we were accustomed to, had the ball.
I was straining my ears to catch what Weston was shouting to me
between his hands, when I saw him start and point t