. When's he going up?'

'He swats as though he expected to go next term,' complained Leonard
Morrison, who had lost his place in the class that morning through
Horace.

'Swats! It's shameful the pace that fellow goes with his lessons; and
the masters think we ought to do the same,' foamed Taylor.

'Ah, they've tried to force it upon all of us,' observed Curtis; 'but
I won't let it disturb me, I can tell you.'

'You don't mind being the dunce of the school,' said Leonard, with a
short laugh.

'I don't care what the fellows call me, so long as they let me
alone,' said the young giant, still with his hands in his pockets. He
was getting tired of the discussion, and Taylor saw that it was of
little use trying to threaten Leonard, and so he walked sulkily away,
to try and think out some other means of getting rid of the obnoxious
scholarship boy.

CHAPTER III.

THE COCK OF THE WALK.

'I say, Duffy, there's an awful row among the fellows at school;
Taylor and Curtis are like raging bulls over this new fellow, and they
say it's all the pater's fault.'

The brother and sister were sitting at their lessons in the little
room known as the study, as they sat when this story opened. Several
weeks, however, had elapsed since that time, and Florence, having her
own cares and interests to think of, had well-nigh forgotten how she
had been appealed to in the matter of the new boy.

'What are you talking about, Len?' she asked, after a pause, during
which she had been muttering over a French verb, with her hand
covering the page, by way of testing whether she knew her lesson.

'That's like a girl!' answered her brother tartly. 'I have told you
more than once or twice about that new boy at Torrington's, and now
you ask me what I am talking about.'

'Oh, well, I didn't know he was so interesting as all that. You told
me a week or two ago that you had sent him to Coventry and settled
him, and so of course I thought it was all over,' said the young lady,
propping her chin in her hands and looking across at her brother.

'But if a fellow won't be settled, what are you to do? I want you to
tell me that, Duffy.'

The young lady shook her head. 'Tell us all about it, Len, I'm not
very busy to-night.'

'Well, we sent that fellow to Coventry, as I told you--not that he's a
bad sort of chap; only he came from one of those beastly board schools
in the town, and we didn't know who he was or what he was, and he kept
his m