hen one's grown up."

"My Uncle Bob is going to give me a pair of skates--clippers," remarked
Harry Wadham.

"My father's going to give me a bike," put in George Alderson.

"Will you bring it back to school with you?" asked Harry.

"Oh! yes, I should think so, if Miss Ware doesn't say no."

"I say, Shivers," cried Fellowes, "where are you going to spend your
holidays?"

"I'm going to stop here," answered the boy called Shivers, in a very
forlorn tone.

"Here--with old Ware?--oh, my! Why can't you go home?"

"I can't go home to India," answered Shivers--his real name, by the bye,
was Egerton, Tom Egerton.

"No--who said you could? But haven't you any relations anywhere?"

Shivers shook his head. "Only in India," he said miserably.

"Poor old chap; that's rough luck for you. Oh, I'll tell you what it is,
you fellows, if I couldn't go home for the holidays--especially at
Christmas--I think I'd just sit down and die."

"Oh! no, you wouldn't," said Shivers; "you'd hate it, and you'd get ever
so home-sick and miserable, but you wouldn't die over it. You'd just get
through somehow, and hope something would happen before next year, or
that some kind fairy or other would----"

"Bosh! there are no fairies nowadays," said Fellowes. "See here,
Shivers, I'll write home and ask my mother if she won't invite you to
come back with me for the holidays."

"Will you really?"

"Yes, I will: and if she says yes, we shall have such a splendid time,
because you know, we live in London, and go to everything, and have
heaps of tips and parties and fun."

"Perhaps she will say no," suggested poor little Shivers, who had
steeled himself to the idea that there would be no Christmas holidays
for him, excepting that he would have no lessons for so many weeks.

"My mother isn't at all the kind of woman who says no," Fellowes
declared loudly.

In a few days' time, however, a letter arrived from his mother, which he
opened eagerly.

"My own darling boy," it said, "I am so very sorry
to have to tell you that dear little Aggie is down
with scarlet fever, and so you cannot come home
for your holidays, nor yet bring your young friend
with you, as I would have loved you to do if all
had been well here. Your Aunt Adelaide would have
had you there, but her two girls have both got
scarlatina--and I believe Aggie got hers there,
though, of course,