ow Jones the quiet but quite measureless
contempt which he felt for his malice and meanness. Mackworth was a
bully of another stamp; he was rather a clever fellow, set himself up
for an aristocrat on the strength of being second cousin to a baronet,
studied "De Brett's Peerage," dressed as faultlessly as Tracy himself,
and affected at all times a studious politeness of manner. He had been
a good deal abroad, and as he constantly adopted the airs and the graces
of a fashionable person, the boys had felicitously named him French
Varnish. But Mackworth was a dangerous enemy, for he had one of the
most biting tongues in the whole school, and there were few things which
he enjoyed more than making a young boy wince under his cutting words.
When Kenrick came to school, his wardrobe, the work of Fuzbeian artists,
was not only well worn--for his mother was too poor to give him new
clothes--but also of a somewhat odd cut; and accordingly the very first
words Mackworth had ever addressed to Kenrick were--

"You new fellow, what's your father?"

"My father is dead," said Kenrick in a low tone.

"Then what _was_ he?"

"He was curate of Fuzby."

"Curate was he; a slashing trade that," was the brutal reply. "Curate
of Fuzby? are you sure it isn't Fusty?"

Kenrick looked at him with a strange glowing of the eyes, which, so far
from disconcerting Mackworth, only made him chuckle at the success of
his taunt. He determined to exercise the lancet of his tongue again,
and let fresh blood if possible.

"Well, glare-eyes! so you didn't like my remark?"

Kenrick made no answer, and Mackworth continued--

"What charity-boy has left you his off-cast clothes? May I ask if your
jacket was intended to serve also as a looking-glass? and is it the
custom in your part of the country not to wear breeches below the
knees?"

There was a corrosive malice in this speech so intense that Kenrick
never saw Mackworth without recalling the shame and anguish it had
caused. Fresh from home, full of quick sensibility, feeling ridicule
with great keenness, Kenrick was too much pained by these words even for
anger. He had hung his head and slunk away. For days after, until, at
his most earnest entreaty, his mother had incurred much privation to
afford him a new and better suit, he had hardly dared to lift up his
face. He had fancied himself a mark for ridicule, and the sense of
shabbiness and poverty had gone far to crush his spirit. After a