Little did I think that my family chronicle was to supply Weston with a new field for his talents!

In the midst of my shame, I could hardly help admiring the clever way in which he had remembered all the details, and twisted them into a comic ballad, which he had composed overnight, and which he now recited with a mock heroic air and voice, which made every point tell, and kept the boys in convulsions of laughter.  Not a smile crossed his long, lantern-jawed face; but Mr. Thomas Johnson made no effort this time to hide a severe fit of his peculiar spasms in his spotted handkerchief.

Sometimes—­at night—­in the very bottom of my own heart, when the darkness seemed thick with horrors, and when I could not make up my mind whether to keep my ears strained to catch the first sound of anything dreadful, or to pull the blankets over my head and run the risk of missing it,—­in such moments, I say, I have had a passing private doubt whether I had inherited my share of the family instinct of courage at a crisis.

It was therefore a relief to me to feel that in this moment of despair, when I was only waiting till the boys, being no longer amused by Weston, should turn to amuse themselves with me, my first and strongest feeling was a sense of relief that Rupert was not at school, and that I could bear the fruits of my own folly on my own shoulders.  To be spared his hectoring and lecturing, his hurt pride, his reproaches, and rage with me, and a probable fight with Weston, in which he must have been seriously hurt and I should have been blamed—­this was some comfort.

I had got my lesson well by heart.  Fifty thousand preachers in fifty thousand pulpits could never have taught me so effectually as Weston’s ballad, and the laughter of his audience, that there is less difference than one would like to believe between the vanity of bragging of one’s self and the vanity of bragging of one’s relations.  Also that it is not dignified or discreet to take new acquaintance into your entire confidence and that even if one is blessed with friends of such quick sympathy that they really enjoy hearing about people they have never seen, it is well not to abuse the privilege, and now and then to allow them an “innings” at describing their remarkable parents, brothers, sisters, and remoter relatives.

I realized all this fully as I stood, with burning cheeks and downcast eyes, at the very elbow of my tormentor.  But I am glad to know that I would not have run away even if I could.  My resolution grew stubborner with every peal of laughter to bear whatever might come with pluck and good temper.  I had been a fool, but I would show that I was not a coward.

I was very glad that Rupert’s influenza kept him at home for a few days.  I told him briefly that I had been bullied, but that it was my own fault, and I would rather say no more about it.  I begged him to promise that he would not take up my quarrel in any way, but leave me to fight it out for myself, which he did.  When he came back I think he regretted his promise.  Happily he never heard all the ballad, but the odd verses which the boys sang about the place put him into a fury.  It was a long time before he forgave me, and I doubt if he ever quite forgave Weston.