else get burned in my place."

"Did you ever cut up at school?" Tom asked, with a growing interest in
and respect for Jack, who replied, "Oh, yes, I was pretty bad sometimes,
and am ashamed of it when I remember how I annoyed some of my teachers.
I have asked pardon of one or two of the ladies when I have chanced to
meet them, but I never could have annoyed Miss Smith, nor will you when
you know her. You haven't seen her yet?"

"Nope!" Tom answered. "I hear she ain't bigger than my thumb, and awful
pretty, Tim Biggs says, and he is threatening to thrash anybody who is
mean to her. I'd laugh to see him tackle me!"

"He'll have no occasion to, for I predict you will be the warmest
champion Miss Smith has. See if you are not," Jack said, offering his
hand to Tom, as they had now reached the school-house.

"He is certainly a good deal of a ruffian," Jack said to himself as he
went on his way, while Tom was not quite so sure of the two chips on
which he was to carry Eloise out if she tried to boss him. He'd wait and
see. That city chap from Crompton Place had certainly been very
friendly, and had not treated him as if he was scum; and after taking
his seat and telling Ruby Ann, with quite an air when she asked why he
was so late, that he had been detained by Mr. Harcourt, who wanted to
talk with him, he took from his desk his slate and rubbed out the
caricature he had drawn the day before of a young girl on crutches
trying to get up the steps of the school-house. He was intending to show
it to Tim Biggs and make him angry, and to the other scholars and make
them laugh, and thus ferment a prejudice against Eloise, for no reason
at all except the natural depravity of his nature.

The word "champion" kept sounding in his ears, and he wrote it two or
three times on his slate, where the girl on crutches had been. "I always
supposed champion belonged to prize-fighters, but Mr. Harcourt didn't
mean that kind. He meant I was to stand up for her and behave myself.
Well, I'll see what kind of craft she is," he thought.

With this decision Tom took up his lessons, and had never been more
studious and well behaved than he was that day.

Meanwhile Jack had gone on his way to the village and bought his chair,
with some misgivings as to how Eloise would receive it, even from Mrs.
Amy. "I guess I'd better go with it, and make it right somehow," he
thought, getting into the chair and riding along in state, while the
people he met loo