"Well, did you see him off?" asked the doctor.

"Yes, sir, all right; we caught an earlier train than the one you said--
at a quarter to," replied Billy, with the tone of a clever man.

"But the quarter to doesn't go to X--. Didn't I tell you to see him off
by the twelve train?"

"I thought it would be all the better to catch the early one."

"Stupid boy, don't you know that train doesn't _go to_ X--?"

"No one said it didn't, sir," put in Billy, with an injured face.

"Did any one say it did?"

"I didn't hear," said Billy; "shall I go back and ask?"

"That would not be the least use," said the master, too vexed almost to
speak.

Billy stood before him, staring at him, and looking anything but
cheerful.

"I shall have to go down to the station myself," said the doctor. "You
are the stupidest boy I ever had to do with."

Billy looked resigned; then fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, he pulled
out a bit of blue cardboard. "Oh, here's the ticket, sir."

"What! Wasn't it enough to send the poor boy off by a wrong train,
without keeping his ticket? Go away, sir, this instant, to your room,
and stay there till I give you leave to quit it!"

Billy obeyed, evidently unable to make the affair out.

By dint of telegrams and messengers, the missing boy turned up again;
but it was a long time before Billy was allowed to forget the way he had
"seen him off."

This is just one specimen of our unlucky schoolfellow's blunders. He
was always in some trouble of the kind. He had to cease taking lessons
in chemistry, because one time he nearly succeeded in blowing himself
and three or four of us up by mixing certain combustibles together by
mistake; and another time he upset a bottle of sulphuric acid over his
clothes.

He was always very near the bottom of his class, because he _would_
prepare the wrong lessons, or misunderstand the questions asked him.
And yet he was always anxious to get on. Once, I remember, he
confidentially asked me, if he were to learn Liddell and Scott's Lexicon
by heart, whether I thought he would be able to get the Greek prize?
But he bungled more in the playground than anywhere. Perhaps it was
because we laughed at him and made him nervous.

It was rarely any one cared to have him on their side at cricket. He
missed the easiest catches, he got leg before wicket, he stopped still
in the middle of a run to see if he would have time to finish it, and
whenever he did manage to score on