CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
THE DUFFER.
What school is without its duffer, I wonder?
Of course, none of us answer to the name, but we all know somebody who does, and it's a curious thing nobody ever thoroughly dislikes a duffer.

Why?
Well, one reason may be that there's nothing as a rule objectionable about such fellows, and another is that we are always ready enough to forgive one who makes us laugh; but I have an idea that the best reason why we are all so tolerant of duffers is that we are able to remind ourselves, when laughing at them, how very much the reverse of duffers we are ourselves.
However that may be, we had a glorious duffer at our school, who got himself and us into all sorts of scrapes, and yet was quite a favourite among his schoolfellows.
Billy Bungle (that was his name) was not by any means an idiot.

He knew perfectly well that two and two made four, and yet, such a queer chap as he was, he would take any amount of pains to make five of it.
If there were two ways of doing anything, a right way and a wrong way, he invariably selected the latter; and if there seemed only one way, and that the right way, then he invented a wrong one for the occasion.
One day, one of the little boys in the school had a letter telling him to come home at once.

He was not long in packing up his carpet bag, and getting the doctor's leave to depart.

But the doctor was unwilling for such a little helpless fellow as he to undertake the long journey all alone.