ab, and under the stalwart escort of Mrs
Potts, the matron, I quitted Dangerfield for good.

My journey home was, as may be imagined, not a festive one. What would
my mother say, or my guardian? What version of the story had Plummer
given them? It consoled me to work myself up into a fury as I sat in
the corner of the railway carriage, and prepare an indictment of his
conduct which should make my conduct appear not only justifiable, but
heroic.

Alas! heroism can rarely endure the rattle of a long railway journey.
Long before we reached Fallowfield my heart was in my boots, and my
fierceness had all evaporated.

But a year ago my father had died, leaving me, his only child, to be the
comfort and support of my mother. What message of comfort or support
was I carrying home to-day? What would my guardian, who had given me
such yards of stern advice about honouring my betters, say when he
heard? Should I be sent to an office to run errands, or passed on to a
school for troublesome boys, or left to knock about with no one to care
what became of me?

With such pleasant misgivings in my mind I reached Fallowfield, and
braced myself up for the interview before me.

CHAPTER FOUR.

BRUSHING-UP THE CLASSICS.

My guardian, I am bound to say, disappointed me. I had rather hoped, as
I travelled home, that I would be able to put my conduct before him in
such a way that he would think me rather a fine young fellow, and
consider himself honoured in being my guardian. That my mother would
take on, I felt sure.

"Women," said I to myself--I was thirteen, and therefore was supposed to
know what women thought about things--"women can't see below the surface
of things. But old Girdler was a boy himself once, and knows what it is
for a fellow to get into a row for being a brick."

My sage prognostications were falsified doubly. My mother, though she
wept to see me come home in this style, did me justice at once. To
think I could ever have doubted her!

"Of course, sonny dear," said she, kissing me, "it was very hard.
Still, I am sure it would have been a shabby thing to tell tales."

"I wasn't going to do it, at any rate," said I, growing a little cocky,
and deciding that some women, at any rate, can see more than meets the
eye.

But Mr Girdler, when he called in during the evening, was most
disappointing.

"So this is what you call being a comfort to your mother?" began he,
without so much as giving me a chan