You'll show him a likeness of the little cousin you are over head and ears in love with, and tell him about the cake your old nurse has packed up among the schoolbooks in your trunk.

He takes the greatest interest in the narration; you feel quite happy to have had a good talk about the dear home, and you go to bed to dream of your little sweetheart and your new friend.
In the morning, when you wake, there is laughter going on in the beds round you.

As you sit up and rub your eyes, and wonder where you are-- it's all so different from home--you hear one boy call out to another-- "I say, Tom, don't you wish you had a nurse to make you cakes ?" That somehow seems pointed at you, though addressed to another, for all the other boys look round at you and grin.
"Wouldn't I ?" replies the Tom appealed to.

"Only when a chap's in love, you know, he's no good at cakes." "Cakes!" "in love!" They must be making fun of you; but however do they know so much about you?
Listen! "If _I_ had a sister, I'd take care _she_ didn't go and marry a butter-man, Jack, wouldn't you ?" It must be meant for you; for you had told Jerry the evening before that your sister was going to marry a provision merchant! Then all of a sudden it flashes upon you.

You have been betrayed! The secrets you have whispered in private have become the property of the entire school; and the friend you fancied so genial and sympathising has made your open-hearted frankness the subject of a blackguard jest, and exposed you to all the agony of schoolboy ridicule! With quivering lips and flushed face, half shame, half anger, you dash beneath the clothes, and wish the floor would open beneath you.