ot geniuses,
and we trust we are not dolts. The best thing we can do is to look out
that we don't lose all our originality while knocking through this
world. The more we can keep of it, the more good we shall do; and if we
find we have enough of it to entitle us to some "followers," let us see
to it we turn them out, if anything, better fellows than they were when
first they "jumped up behind."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE DUFFER.

What school is without its duffer, I wonder? Of course, none of us
answer to the name, but we all know somebody who does, and it's a
curious thing nobody ever thoroughly dislikes a duffer. Why? Well, one
reason may be that there's nothing as a rule objectionable about such
fellows, and another is that we are always ready enough to forgive one
who makes us laugh; but I have an idea that the best reason why we are
all so tolerant of duffers is that we are able to remind ourselves, when
laughing at them, how very much the reverse of duffers we are ourselves.

However that may be, we had a glorious duffer at our school, who got
himself and us into all sorts of scrapes, and yet was quite a favourite
among his schoolfellows.

Billy Bungle (that was his name) was not by any means an idiot. He knew
perfectly well that two and two made four, and yet, such a queer chap as
he was, he would take any amount of pains to make five of it.

If there were two ways of doing anything, a right way and a wrong way,
he invariably selected the latter; and if there seemed only one way, and
that the right way, then he invented a wrong one for the occasion.

One day, one of the little boys in the school had a letter telling him
to come home at once. He was not long in packing up his carpet bag, and
getting the doctor's leave to depart. But the doctor was unwilling for
such a little helpless fellow as he to undertake the long journey all
alone. He came down to the playground where we were, and beckoning to
Billy, who happened to be the nearest at hand, said, "Bungle, will you
go with this boy to the station, and see him off by the twelve train to
X--? Here is the money to get his ticket; and carry his bag for him,
there's a man."

Billy readily accepted the commission, and we watched him proudly
marching from the playground with his small charge on one side and the
carpet bag on the other. The station was a mile off, and it was nearly
one o'clock when he returned home. We were in class at the time.