en the sun was on
them. What was the greatest heat Holt had ever felt? Then came the
surprise. Holt had last come from his uncle's farm; but he was born in
India, and had lived there till eighteen months ago. So, while Hugh had
chattered away about the sea at Broadstairs, and the heat on the leads
at home, his companion had come fourteen thousand miles over the ocean,
and had felt a heat nearly as extreme as that of the Great Desert! Holt
was very unassuming too. He talked of the heat of gleaning in his
uncle's harvest-fields, and of the kitchen when the harvest-supper was
cooking; owning that he remembered he had felt hotter in India. Hugh
heaped questions upon him about his native country and the voyage; and
Holt liked to be asked: so that the boys were not at all like strangers
just met for the first time. They raised their voices in the eagerness
of their talk, from a whisper so as to be heard quite across the table,
above the hum and buzz of above thirty others, who were learning their
lessons half-aloud. At last Hugh was startled by hearing the words
"Prater," "Prater the second." He was silent instantly, to Holt's great
wonder.

Without raising his eyes from his book, Phil said, so as to be heard as
far as the usher,--

"Who prated of Prater the second? Who is Prater the third?"

There was a laugh which provoked the usher to come and see whereabouts
in Sallust such a passage as this was to be found. Not finding any such,
he knuckled Phil's head, and pulled his hair, till Hugh cried out--

"O, don't, sir! Don't hurt him so!"

"Do you call that hurting? You will soon find what hurting is, when you
become acquainted with our birch. You shall have four times seven with
our birch----Let us see,--that is your favourite number, I think."

The usher looked round, and almost everybody laughed.

"You see I have your secret;--four times seven," continued Mr. Carnaby.
"What do you shake your head for?"

"Because you have not my secret about four times seven."

"Did not I hear your father? Eh?"

"What did you hear my father say? Nobody here knows what he meant? and
nobody need know, unless I choose to tell--which I don't.--Please don't
teaze Phil about it, sir: for he knows no more about it than you do."

Mr. Carnaby said something about the impertinence of little boys, as if
they could have secrets, and then declared it high time that the
youngsters should go to bed. Hugh delivered Cook's Voyages into his
hands,