“Tell you what, Tommy,” East would say; “you’ll spoil young Hopeful with too much coddling.  Why can’t you let him go about by himself and find his own level?  He’ll never be worth a button if you go on keeping him under your skirts.”

“Well, but he ain’t fit to fight his own way yet; I’m trying to get him to it every day, but he’s very odd.  Poor little beggar!  I can’t make him out a bit.  He ain’t a bit like anything I’ve ever seen or heard of—­he seems all over nerves; anything you say seems to hurt him like a cut or a blow.”

“That sort of boy’s no use here,” said East; “he’ll only spoil.  Now I’ll tell you what to do, Tommy.  Go and get a nice large band-box made, and put him in with plenty of cotton-wool and a pap-bottle, labelled ’With care—­this side up,’ and send him back to mamma.”

“I think I shall make a hand of him though,” said Tom, smiling, “say what you will.  There’s something about him, every now and then, which shows me he’s got pluck somewhere in him.  That’s the only thing after all that’ll wash, ain’t it, old Scud?  But how to get at it and bring it out?”

Tom took one hand out of his breeches-pocket and stuck it in his back hair for a scratch, giving his hat a tilt over his nose, his one method of invoking wisdom.  He stared at the ground with a ludicrously puzzled look, and presently looked up and met East’s eyes.  That young gentleman slapped him on the back, and then put his arm round his shoulder, as they strolled through the quadrangle together.  “Tom,” said he, “blest if you ain’t the best old fellow ever was.  I do like to see you go into a thing.  Hang it, I wish I could take things as you do; but I never can get higher than a joke.  Everything’s a joke.  If I was going to be flogged next minute, I should be in a blue funk, but I couldn’t help laughing at it for the life of me.”

“Brown and East, you go and fag for Jones on the great fives court.”

“Hullo, though, that’s past a joke,” broke out East, springing at the young gentleman who addressed them, and catching him by the collar.—­“Here, Tommy, catch hold of him t’other side before he can holla.”

The youth was seized, and dragged, struggling, out of the quadrangle into the School-house hall.  He was one of the miserable little pretty white-handed, curly-headed boys, petted and pampered by some of the big fellows, who wrote their verses for them, taught them to drink and use bad language, and did all they could to spoil them for everything * in this world and the next.  One of the avocations in which these young gentlemen took particular delight was in going about and getting fags for their protectors, when those heroes were playing any game.  They carried about pencil and paper with them, putting down the names of all the boys they sent, always sending five times as many as were wanted, and getting all those thrashed who didn’t go.  The present youth belonged to a house which was very jealous of the School-house, and always picked out School-house fags when he could find them.  However, this time he’d got the wrong sow by the ear.  His captors slammed the great door of the hall, and East put his back against it, while Tom gave the prisoner a shake up, took away his list, and stood him up on the floor, while he proceeded leisurely to examine that document.