d be expected
of a fellow so bedecked and preserved as if he had just stepped out of a
bandbox or a tailor's shop? Left alone in his pride and perfection--the
very beginning of a Pharisee--he would only go from bad to worse and
come at last to a sad end. We hardly claimed to be philanthropists, but
we did feel it was our duty to rescue this lad. It might be, of course,
that we could not finally save him, but he ought at least to have a
chance, and Speug had a quite peculiar satisfaction in at once removing
the two offensive tails by one vigorous pull, while the rumpling of a
collar was a work of missionary zeal. No system of philanthropy is
successful with all cases, and we had our failures, which we think about
unto this day, and which have only justified our sad predictions. Boys
like the two Dowbiggins never improved, and were at last given up in
despair even by Speug, their tails being renewed day by day and their
faces remaining in all circumstances quite unmoved; but within a month
the average boy had laid aside the last remnant of conventionality, and
was only outdone by Peter himself in studied negligence of attire.

Peter's own course of discipline was sharp, but it did not last long,
for certain practical reasons.

"What business have you here, ye son of a horse-couper?" was the
encouraging salutation offered by a solicitor's son to the stumpy little
figure bereft of its father and left to fight its battles alone.

"Mair business than you, spindleshanks, ye son o' a thievin' lawyer,"
and although Peter was four years younger and small for his age, he
showed that he had not learned boxing from his father's grooms without
profit, and his opponent attended no more classes that day. This
encounter excited the deepest interest and revived the whole life of the
school. One lad after another experimented on Peter and made as much of
it as drawing a badger. He was often hurt, but he never uttered any cry.
He gave rather more than he got, and lads going home in the afternoon
could see him giving an account of the studies of the day to an admiring
audience in the stable-yard. By-and-by he was left severely alone, and
for the impudence of him, and his courage, and his endurance, and his
general cockiness, and his extraordinary ingenuity in mischief, he was
called "Speug," which is Scotch for a sparrow, and figuratively
expressed the admiration of the school.

It would be brazen falsehood to say that Peter was a schola