ck them!"

Beatrice smiled. "Thick skulls are proverbial, you know, Alex."

"Well, I really believe it is right. Look, Bee," and he examined his own
face in the glass over the chimney; "there, do you see a little bit of
a scar under my eyebrow?--there! Well, that was where I was knocked over
by a cricket-ball last half, pretty much harder than poor Fred
could have come against the ground,--but what harm did it do me? Why
everything spun round with me for five minutes or so, and I had a black
eye enough to have scared you, but I was not a bit the worse otherwise.
Poor Fred, he was quite frightened for me I believe; for the first thing
I saw was him, looking all green and yellow, standing over me, and so I
got up and laughed at him for thinking I could care about it. That was
the worst of it! I wish I had not been always set against him. I would
give anything now."

"Well, but Alex, I don't understand. You were very good friends at the
bottom, after all; you can't have anything really to repent of towards
him."

"Oh, haven't I though?" was the reply. "It was more the other fellows'
doing than my own, to be sure, and yet, after all, it was worse, knowing
all about him as I did; but somehow, every one, grandmamma and all of
you, had been preaching up to me all my life that cousin Fred was to be
such a friend of mine. And then when he came to school, there he was--a
fellow with a pink and white face, like a girl's, and that did not even
know how to shy a stone, and cried for his mamma! Well, I wish I could
begin it all over again."

"But do you mean that he was really a--a--what you call a Miss Molly?"

"Who said so? No, not a bit of it!" said Alex. "No one thought so in
reality, though it was a good joke to put him in a rage, and pretend
to think that he could not do anything. Why, it took a dozen times
more spirit for him to be first in everything than for me, who had been
knocked about all my life. And he was up to anything, Bee, to anything.
The matches at foot-ball will be good for nothing now; I am sure I
shan't care if we do win."

"And the prize," said Beatrice, "the scholarship!"

"I have no heart to try for it now! I would not, if Uncle Geoffrey
had not a right to expect it of me. Let me see: if Fred is well by the
summer, why then--hurrah! Really, Queenie, he might get it all up in no
time, clever fellow as he is, and be first after all. Don't you think
so?"

Queen Bee shook her head. "They say he must