e
construction and meaning in one sentence of explanation.

"Thank you! thank you!" exclaimed Alec. "I see it all now as plain as
English."

"Stop, stop, my young bantam!" said Mr Cupples. "Don't think you're
going to break into my privacy and get off with the booty so cheaply.
Just you construe the whole sentence to me."

Alec did so tolerably well; for the passage was only an easy extract,
the class not having reached Homer yet. Mr Cupples put several
questions to him, which gave him more insight into Greek than a week's
work in the class would have done, and ended with a small lecture
suggested by the passage, drinking away at his toddy all the time. The
lecture and the toddy ended together. Turning his head aside, where it
lay back in the horse-hair chair, he said sleepily:

"Go away--I don't know your name.--Come and see me to-morrow night. I'm
drunk now."

Alec rose, made some attempt at thanks, received no syllable of reply,
and went out, closing the door behind him, and leaving Mr Cupples to
his dreams.

His countenance had not made much approximation to respectability
before the Monday. He therefore kept it as well as he could out of Mr
Fraser's sight, to whom he did not wish to give explanations to the
prejudice of any of his fellow-students. Mr Fraser, however, saw his
black eye well enough, but was too discreet to ask questions, and
appeared quite unaware of the transitory blemish.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Meantime, at Glamerton the winter passed very much like former winters
to all but three--Mrs Forbes, Annie Anderson, and Willie Macwha. To
these the loss of Alec was dreary. So they were in a manner compelled
to draw closer together. At school, Curly assumed the protectorship of
Annie which had naturally devolved upon him, although there was now
comparatively little occasion for its exercise; and Mrs Forbes, finding
herself lonely in her parlour during the long _forenights_, got into
the habit of sending Mary at least three times a week to fetch her.
This was not agreeable to the Bruce, but the kingly inheritor abode his
hour; and Mrs Forbes had no notion of the amount of offence she gave by
doing so.

That parlour at Howglen was to Annie a little heaven hollowed out of
the winter. The warm curtains drawn, and the fire blazing
defiantly,--the angel with the flaming sword to protect their Paradise
from the frost, it was indeed a contrast to the sordid shop, and the
rat-haunted garret.