tions by the suspicious usher. I felt sure that Heriot and
Julia met. His eyes were on her all through prayer-time, and hers
wandered over the boys' heads till they rested on him, when they gave a
short flutter and dropped, like a bird shot dead. The boys must have
had some knowledge that love was busy in their midst, for they spoke of
Heriot and Julia as a jolly couple, and of Boddy as one meaning to play
the part of old Nick the first opportunity. She was kinder to them than
ever. It was not a new thing that she should send in cakes of her own
making, but it was extraordinary that we should get these thoughtful
presents as often as once a fortnight, and it became usual to hear a boy
exclaim, either among a knot of fellows or to himself, 'By jingo, she is
a pretty girl!' on her passing out of the room, and sometimes entirely
of his own idea. I am persuaded that if she had consented to marry
Boddy, the boys would have been seriously disposed to conspire to jump
up in the church and forbid the banns. We should have preferred to hand
her to the junior usher, Catman, of whom the rumour ran in the school
that he once drank a bottle of wine and was sick after it, and he was
therefore a weak creature to our minds; the truth of the rumour being
confirmed by his pale complexion. That we would have handed our blooming
princess to him was full proof of our abhorrence of Boddy. I might have
thought with the other boys that she was growing prettier, only I never
could imagine her so delicious as when she smiled at my father.

The consequence of the enlistment of the whole school in Heriot's
interests was that at cricket-matches, picnics on the hills, and
boating on the canal, Mr. Boddy was begirt with spies, and little Temple
reported to Heriot a conversation that he, lying hidden in tall grass,
had heard between Boddy and Julia. Boddy asked her to take private
lessons in French from him. Heriot listened to the monstrous tale as he
was on the point of entering Julia's boat, where Boddy sat beside her,
and Heriot rowed stroke-oar. He dipped his blade, and said, loud enough
to be heard by me in Catman's boat,

'Do you think French useful in a military education, sir?'

And Boddy said, 'Yes, of course it is.'

Says Heriot, 'Then I think I shall take lessons.'

Boddy told him he was taking lessons in the school.

'Oh!' says Heriot, 'I mean private lessons'; and here he repeated one
of Temple's pieces of communication: 'so much mor