hool:" or, "Don't say it was a dirty trick--say it
was a beastly chouse, or something of that sort. We're awfully
particular about talking at ----'s, and I don't want Cholmondley to hear
you."

Jem was wonderfully polished-up himself, and as pugnacious on behalf of
all the institutions of his school as he had once been about our pond. I
got my hair as near right as one cutting and the town hair-cutter could
bring it, and mended my manners and held my own with good temper. When
it came to feats of skill or endurance, I more than held my own. Indeed,
I so amazed one very "swell" little friend of Jem's whose mother (a
titled lady) had allowed him to spend part of the summer holidays with
Jem for change of air, that he vowed I must go and stay with him in the
winter, and do juggler and acrobat at their Christmas theatricals. But
he may have reported me as being rough as well as ready, for her
ladyship never ratified the invitation. Not that I would have left home
at Christmas, and not that I lacked pleasure in the holidays. But other
fashions of games and speech and boyish etiquette lay between me and
Jem; hospitality, if not choice, kept him closely with his
school-fellows, and neither they nor he had part in the day-dreams of my
soul.

For the spell of the Penny Numbers had not grown weaker as I grew older.
In the holidays I came back to them as to friends. At school they made
the faded maps on Snuffy's dirty walls alive with visions, and many a
night as I lay awake with pain and over-weariness in the stifling
dormitory, my thoughts took refuge not in dreams of home nor in castles
of the air, but in phantom ships that sailed for ever round the world.

The day of the interview with my father I roused myself from my
grievances to consider a more practical question. Why should I not go to
sea? No matter whose fault it was, there was no doubt that I was
ill-educated, and that I did not please my father as Jem did. On the
other hand I was strong and hardy, nimble and willing to obey; and I had
roughed it enough, in all conscience. I must have ill luck indeed, if I
lit upon a captain more cruel than Mr. Crayshaw. I did not know exactly
how it was to be accomplished, but I knew enough to know that I could
not aim at the Royal Navy. Of course I should have preferred it. I had
never seen naval officers, but if they were like officers in the army,
like Colonel Jervois, for instance, it was with such a port and bearing
that I wou