'No--his son, the junior master; it was he who counted up the marks.'

'Do you mean the marks you got at the examination?'

'No, the weekly marks I had got in all my studies during the half-year;
that's the way they calculate to see whether one may keep the
"exhibition."'

'Do you think he can have made any mistake?'

'He might, perhaps, to spite me; it's not likely otherwise, for he's a
dab at arithmetic. I asked the Doctor to let me see the book, but he
wouldn't; and of course I couldn't tell him what I thought, and it would
have been no use if I had.'

'And you did really work all the time?' said Jessie, looking at him
tenderly and seriously out of her big black eyes.

'Well, almost all--not quite the last week or two, perhaps: it was
awfully hot weather, and being so sure, I thought I might take it easy;
but that couldn't have made the difference.'

'I wish you had been able to say you worked quite all the time,' said
Jessie gravely, with a little sigh, 'for then father couldn't have been
angry.'

'I'm afraid he's awfully vexed, isn't he?' said Cecil, with rather an
anxious glance towards the study.

'I think so; and Percy says' (Percy was the cadet) 'that he doesn't know
how to manage about your education. Francie and I have been so anxious
about it: it would be too dreadful if you were not to be a clergyman,
wouldn't it, Cecil?'

Cecil said nothing, but absently doled out the last cabbage leaf to the
rabbits in such small morsels, that they nibbled at his fingers as if
they thought those part of the provender. Jessie was lost in a
calculation of whether if Frances and she were to have no new frocks for
a twelvemonth, and to save up all their pocket-money, that would make it
possible for Cecil to go back to the grammar school, when Mr. Cunningham
leaned out of the study window and called him.

Though he had been expecting the summons, he started and coloured
violently, but ran off at once, going in by the back door, which was the
nearest way.

Jessie went into a little tool-shed, which was close to the rabbits'
dwelling-place. She did not like to watch the window, but was too
anxious to be able to go and help Francie with her gardening, or to play
with Lewis, who was wandering aimlessly about. 'Father,' who was so
tender to his little girls, who was the very very best man, as Jessie
believed, in the whole world, could nevertheless be very severe when he
saw occasion--could reprove in a way which an