CHAPTER FOUR.
BRUSHING-UP THE CLASSICS.
My guardian, I am bound to say, disappointed me.

I had rather hoped, as I travelled home, that I would be able to put my conduct before him in such a way that he would think me rather a fine young fellow, and consider himself honoured in being my guardian.

That my mother would take on, I felt sure.
"Women," said I to myself--I was thirteen, and therefore was supposed to know what women thought about things--"women can't see below the surface of things.

But old Girdler was a boy himself once, and knows what it is for a fellow to get into a row for being a brick." My sage prognostications were falsified doubly.

My mother, though she wept to see me come home in this style, did me justice at once.