npleasant hardness was beginning to creep over me.
"The next time I run away," was my thought, "I shall not run home." But
with this came a rush of regret for Jem's sake. I knew that Crayshaw's,
did more harm to him than to me, and almost involuntarily I put my arms
round him, thinking that if they would only let him stay, I could go
back and bear anything, like Lewis Lorraine. Jem had been crying, and
when he hid his face on my shoulder, and leaned against me, I thought it
was for comfort, but he got heavier and heavier, till I called out, and
he rolled from my arms and was caught in my father's. He had been
standing about on the bad foot, and pain and weariness and hunger and
fright overpowered him, and he had fainted.

The dog-cart was counter-ordered, and Jem was put to bed, and Martha
served me a breakfast that would have served six full-grown men. I ate
far more than satisfied me, but far less than satisfied Martha, who
seemed to hope that cold fowl and boiled eggs, fried bacon and pickled
beef, plain cakes and currant cakes, jam and marmalade, buttered toast,
strong tea and unlimited sugar and yellow cream, would atone for the
past in proportion to the amount I ate, if it did not fatten me under
her eyes. I really think I spent the rest of the day in stupor. I am
sure it was not till the following morning that I learned the decision
to which my father had come about us.

Jem was too obviously ill to be anywhere at present but at home; and my
father decided that he would not send him back to Crayshaw's at all, but
to a much more expensive school in the south of England, to which the
parson of our parish was sending one of his sons. I was to return to
Crayshaw's at once; he could not afford the expensive school for us
both, and Jem was the eldest. Besides which, he was not going to
countenance rebellion in any school to which he sent his sons, or to
insult a man so highly recommended to him as Mr. Crayshaw had been.
There certainly seemed to have been some severity, and the boys seemed
to be a very rough lot; but Jem would fight, and if he gave he must
take. His great-grandfather was just the same, and _he_ fought the
Putney Pet when he was five-and-twenty, and his parents thought he was
sitting quietly at his desk in Fetter Lane.

I loved Jem too well to be jealous of him, but I was not the less
conscious of the tender tone in which my father always spoke even of
his faults, and of the way it stiffened and coole