s for you. It's only a cheap, common thing, but I hadn't
any more money."

The paper was unrolled, and out came a little silver locket.

"I didn't want the others to see--you mustn't ever let any one know.
There's a bit of my hair inside."

"Now, then, don't stay there guzzling tea all night!" came Valentine's
voice through the open window.

"But, my dear boy, whatever made you spend your money in giving me such
a pretty present?"

"I want," answered the boy, speaking as though half ashamed of the
request he was making--"I want you to wear it when you wear the brooch;
stick it somewhere on your chain. I should like, don't you know, to
feel I'm one of your family."

"So you are," answered Queen Mab, kissing him. "So you are, and always
will be--my own boy Jack!"

CHAPTER VII.

STRIFE IN THE UPPER FOURTH.

"'You are exceedingly ugly,' said the wild ducks."--_The Ugly Duckling_.

School was a great change after Brenlands. The rooms seemed barer, the
desks more inky, and the bread and butter a good eighth of an inch
thicker than they had been at the close of the previous term; but by
the end of the first week our two friends had settled to work, and
things were going on much the same as usual.

Considerable alterations had been made in the composition of the Upper
Fourth. Most of the occupants of the front row of benches had got
their remove, while a number of boys from the lower division, of whom
Valentine was one, had come up to join Mr. Rowlands' class. The Long
Dormitory was also changed, and Jack now found himself in Number Eight,
sleeping in a bed next to that of his cousin.

Being thus so much thrown together, both in and out of school, it was
only natural that the friendship which they had formed in the holidays
should be still more firmly established. Only one thing acted as a
drag upon it, and that was the fact of Jack's still finding a strong
counter-attraction in the society of Garston, Rosher, and Teal.

The quartette began the term badly by being largely responsible for a
disturbance which occurred in the dining-hall, when a clockwork frog
was suddenly discovered disporting itself in Pilson's teacup; and it is
probable that Jack would have continued to distinguish himself as a
black sheep, in company with his three unruly classmates, had it not
been for an unforeseen occurrence which caused him to make a change in
his choice of friends.

As not unfrequently happens, the few ori