Sam, humbly. "I can't make out how it is.
I try all I know--I do indeed--but somehow I'm always in trouble."

"You are," replies the doctor. "What is it about this time, Mr
Wardlaw?"

"I can tell you, sir--" begins Sam eagerly.

"Be silent, sir! Well, Mr Wardlaw?"

"The boy has been very disrespectful, sir. When I came into the class-
room this morning and opened my desk, I found it contained a guinea-pig
and two white mice, who had--"

Here the unlucky Sam, after a desperate effort, in the course of which
he has almost choked himself with a handkerchief, bursts into a laugh.

"What do you mean, sir?" thunders the doctor.

"Oh, sir, I couldn't help it--really I couldn't; I would rather have
choked than do it--it's just like me!"

And he looks so distressed and humble that the doctor turns from him,
and invites Mr Wardlaw to resume his impeachment.

"I have only to say that this boy, on being charged with the deed,
confessed to having done it."

"Oh yes, sir, that's all right--I did it; I'm very sorry; somehow I
can't make out how it is I'm so bad," says Sam, with the air of one
suffering from the strain of a constant anxiety.

"Don't talk nonsense, sir!" says the doctor, sternly; "you can make it
out as well as I can."

"Shall I hold out my hand, sir?" says Sam, who by this time has a good
idea of the routine of practice pursued in such interviews.

"No," says the doctor. "Leave him here, Mr Wardlaw; and you," adds he,
for the first time remembering that I was present--"you can go."

So we departed, leaving Sam shivering and shaking in the middle of the
carpet. It was half an hour before he rejoined his schoolfellows, and
this time his hands were not sore. But somehow he managed to avoid
getting into scrapes for a good deal longer than usual. But there is no
resisting the inevitable. He did in due time find himself in another
row; and then he suddenly vanished from our midst, for he had been
expelled.

Now, with regard to Sam and boys like him, it is of course only natural
to hold them up as examples to others. No boy can be a scamp and not
suffer for it some way or other; and as to saying it's one's misfortune
rather than one's fault that it is so, that is as ridiculous as to say,
when you choose to walk north, that it is your misfortune you are not
walking south.

But, in excuse for Sam, we must say that he was by no means the worst
boy in our school, though he did get into the most rows