When the questions, “What’s your name?”—­“How old are you?”—­“Where do you live?” “Were you sick at sea?”—­“What made you come to this school?” “How high can you jump?”—­“Can you box?” “Can you fight?”—­and the like, had been promptly and amiably answered, there was a lull.  The silence was broken by young Edgar himself.  Drawing himself up to the full height of his graceful little figure and thumping his chest with his closed fist, he said, “Any boy who wants to may hit me here, as hard as he can.”

The boys looked at each other inquiringly for a moment—­they were uncertain, whether this was a specimen of American humor or to be taken literally.  Presently the largest and strongest among them stepped forward.  He was a stalwart fellow for his years, but his excessively blond coloring, together with the effeminate style in which his mother insisted upon dressing him, caused the boys to give him the name of “Beauty,” which was soon shortened into “Beaut,” and had finally become “the Beau.”

“Will you let me hit you?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Edgar.  “Count three and hit.  You can’t hurt me.”

As “the Beau” counted, “One—­two—­three”—­Edgar gently inflated his lungs, expanding his chest to its fullest extent, and then, at the moment of receiving the blow, exhaled the air.  He did not stagger or flinch, though his antagonist struck straight from the shoulder, with a brawny, small fist.

The rest of the boys, in turn, struck him—­each time counting three—­with the same result.  Finally “the Beau” said,

“You hit me.”

Edgar counted, “One—­two—­three”—­and struck out with clenched fist, but “the Beau” not knowing the trick, was promptly bowled over on the grass—­the shock making quick tears start in his forget-me-not blue eyes.

The boys were, one and all, open and clamorous in their admiration.

“Pshaw,” said young Edgar, indifferently.  “It’s nothing.  All the boys in Virginia can do that.”

“Can you play leap-frog?” asked “Freckles”—­a wiry looking little fellow, with carotty locks and a freckled nose, whose leaping had hitherto been unrivalled.

“I’ll show you,” was the reply.

Instantly, a dozen backs were bent in readiness for the game, and over them, one by one, vaulted Edgar, with the lightness of a bird, his brown curls blowing out behind him, as his baggy yellow thighs and thin red legs flew through the air.

“Freckles” magnanimously owned himself beaten at his own game.

“Let’s race,” said “Goggles”—­a lean, long-legged, swathy boy, with a hooked nose and bulging, black eyes.

Like a flash, the whole lot of them were off down the gravel walk, under the elms.  Edgar and “Goggles”—­abreast—­led for a few moments, then Edgar gradually gained and came out some twenty feet ahead of “Goggles,” and double that ahead of the foremost of the others.

It was not only these accomplishments in themselves that made the American boy at once take the place of hero and leader of his form in this school of old England, but the quiet and unassuming mien with which he bore his superiority—­not seeming in the least to despise the weakest or most backward of his competitors, and good-humoredly initiating them all into the little secrets of his success in performing apparently difficult feats.