Still, what a lucky escape I had had from blabbing
about my exhibition! The fellow, too, seemed a nice sort of chap, and
disposed to be friendly, so there was no harm done after all.

I could tell, long before I reached it, that the room which had been
indicated to me as the place where I might get the information for which
I thirsted was, to say the least, inhabited--for the noise which
penetrated through the keyhole and the cracks of the door was appalling.
Either, thought I, a free fight is going on within, or there is a steam
engine at work, or the builders are shooting bricks through the window.
I was mistaken. It was only five boys of about my age talking.

The silence which greeted my appearance was rather more formidable than
the noise which had preceded it. In the midst of it, however, I
observed the form of Master Trimble, also that of my travelling
companion of the morning, and concluded therefore that I had come to the
right place for information.

"Full up! cut!" was the cordial greeting of the company generally.

"Hullo, it's Sarah!" cried my travelling companion. "What a lark!
Collar him, you chaps. That's the idiot I was telling about. He came
down in the train with his ma--"

"She wasn't," said I; "she was no relation."

A loud laugh greeted this disclaimer.

"Well, his nurse, or aunt, or washerwoman, or something."

"No, she wasn't."

"Shut up, and don't tell crams."

"It's _you_ who are telling crams," said I, for the blood of the Joneses
was getting up.

"Look here; do you mean to call me a crammer?" demanded the speaker,
looking very imposing.

"If you say it again I will," said I. "I tell you that woman had no
more to do with me than you; there!"

It was a critical situation, and the key to it was in my accuser's
hands. If he insisted that the lady in question had anything to do with
me, I was committed to call him a crammer. And if I called him a
crammer, he was equally committed by all tradition to punch my head.
And in the humour I was then in, he was not likely to do that without
getting one back for himself.

"I know who it was," suddenly cried Trimble; "of course! Tempest told
me last term there was a young ass coming up who'd been at a girls'
school, and had got an exhibition or something. Of course this was his
old school dame. Good old Sarah!"

At this terrific exposure the spirit leaked out of me. My tell-tale
blushes confirmed what was true in the story, a