with another lad very much like him, but a little
taller, and probably a couple of years older.

"Hullo, pauper!" said the first.

I felt my cheeks tingle, and my tongue wanted to say something very
sharp, but I kept my teeth closed for a moment and then said:

"Good morning, sir!"

He took no notice of this, but turned to his brother and whispered
something, when they both laughed together; and as I bent down over my
work I felt as if I must have looked very much like one of the scarlet
geraniums whose dead blossom stems I was taking out.

Of course, a boy with a well-balanced brain and plenty of sound, honest,
English stuff in him ought to be able to treat with contempt the jeering
and laughter of those who are teasing him; but somehow I'm afraid that
there are very few boys who can bear being laughed at with equanimity.
I know, to be frank, I could not, for as those two lads stared at me and
then looked at each other and whispered, and then laughed heartily--
well, no; not heartily, but in a forced way, I felt my face burn and my
fingers tingle. My mouth seemed to get a little dry, too, and the
thought came upon me in the midst of my sensations that I wanted to get
up and fight.

The circumstances were rather exceptional, for I was suffering from two
sore places. One started from my shoulder and went down my back, where
there must have been the mark of the cane; the other was a mental sore,
caused by the word _pauper_, which seemed to rankle and sting more than
the cut from the cane.

Of course I ought to have treated it as beneath my notice, but whoever
reads this will have found out before now that I was very far from
perfect; and as those two lads evidently saw my annoyance, and went on
trying to increase it, I bent over my work in a vicious way, and kept on
taking out the dead leaves and stems as if they were some of the enemies
Mr Solomon had been talking about in the pits.

All at once, as I was bending down, I heard Courtenay, the elder boy,
say:

"What did he say--back to school and be flogged?"

"Yes," said Philip aloud; "but he didn't know. They only flog workhouse
boys and paupers."

"I say, though," said Courtenay, "who is that chap grubbing out the
slugs and snails?"

My back was turned, and I went on with my work. "What! that chap I
spoke to?" said Philip; "why, I told you. He's a pauper."

"Is he?"

"Yes, and Browny fetched him from the workhouse. Brought him home in
the cart.