.

"Do you know your lesson?" you will ask him.

"Yes, sir," he will reply.

"But you can't say it."

"Please, sir, I forget it now."

Memory is his weak point. He has done his best, whatever the result may
be. Last night he knew his lesson perfectly; the proof is that he said
it to his mother, and that the excellent lady told him he knew it very
well. Again this morning, as he was in the train coming to school, he
repeated it to himself, and he did not make one mistake. He knows he
didn't.

* * * * *

If he has done but two sentences of his home work, "he is afraid" he
has not quite finished his exercise.

"But, my dear boy, you have written but two sentences."

"Is that all?" he will inquire.

"That is all."

"Please, sir, I thought I had done more than that." And he looks at it
on all sides, turns it to the right, to the left, upside down; he reads
it forwards, he reads it backwards. No use; he can't make it out.

All at once, however, he will remember that he had a bad headache last
night, or maybe a bilious attack.

The bilious attack is to the English schoolboy what the _migraine_ is
to the dear ladies of France: a good maid-of-all-work.

* * * * *

Sometimes my young hero brings no exercise at all. It has slipped, in
the train, from the book in which he had carefully placed it, or there
is a crack in his locker, and the paper slipped through. You order
excavations to be made, and the exercise has vanished like magic.
Johnny wonders.

"Perhaps the mice ate it!" you are wicked enough to suggest.

This makes him smile and blush. He generally collapses before a remark
like this.

* * * * *

But if he has a good excuse, behold him!

"I could not do my exercise last night," said to me one day a young
Briton. It was evident from his self-satisfied and confident assurance
that he had a good answer ready for my inquiry.

"You couldn't," I said; "why?"

"Please, sir, grandmamma died last night!"

"Oh! did she? Well, well--I hope this won't happen again."

This put me in mind of the boy who, being reproached for his many
mistakes in his translation, pleaded:

"Please, sir, it isn't my fault. Papa _will_ help me."

An English schoolboy never tells stories--never.

A mother once brought her little son to the head-master of a great
public school.

"I trust my son will