ly.
"Have another try, my boy: never let any difficulty master you, if you
can help it."

A knock at the door, and Mr. Selby was summoned to some parishioner. He
was often interrupted when with his pupils, but they were generally
conscientious enough to go on working during his absence.

But Roy's lesson this morning was not interesting, and he was unusually
talkative.

"It's no good trying to master this sum, it's all those nines. They're
nasty, lanky, spiteful little brutes, I should like to tear them out of
the sum-books."

"Expel them from arithmetic," said Dudley, looking up from a latin
exercise, his sunny smile appearing. "Don't you wish we could have a
huge dust hole to empty all the nasty people and things in that we don't
like?"

"Yes--I'd shovel the nines in fast enough, and a few eights to keep them
company, and then I would throw in all my medicine bottles, and my great
coat, and--and Mrs. Selby on the top of them!"

This last clause was added in a whisper, for if there was any one that
Roy really disliked, it was his tutor's wife. She was a kind-hearted
woman, but fidgety and fussy to the last degree, and was always in a
bustle. Having no children, she expended all her energies on the parish,
and there was not a domestic detail in any village home that escaped her
eye. She had spoken sharply to the boys that morning for bringing in
muddy footprints, and her words were still rankling in Roy's breast.

"It's so awfully hot," Roy continued; "let us open the window, Dudley.
Old Selby won't mind for once; it's like an oven in here."

The window was opened with some difficulty, and the fresh air blowing in
seemed delicious to the boys. Roy clambered up on the old window-seat,
slate in hand, but his eyes commanded the view of the village street,
and the sum made slow progress in consequence.

"I say! Tom White's pig has broken loose, and that stupid Johnnie Dent
is driving it straight into old Principle's! I expect he'll come out in
an awful rage. No--the door must be shut, he can't get in. There seems
quite a crowd round old Principle's. He's giving them a lecture, I
expect. Here comes old Mother Selby tearing up the street, her bonnet
strings are flying and she's awfully excited!"

A minute after the door was thrown open.

"John, it's the most extraordinary thing--oh, you are not here!--Where
is Mr. Selby? I always knew something would happen to that old man
roaming over the hills half the night,