“——­Saturday.  I could not catch the milkman, and now I’ve got your letter, though Snuffy read it first.  Jem and I cry dreadful in bed.  That’s the comfort of being together.  I’ll try and be as good as I can, but you don’t know what this place is.  It’s very different to the farm.  Do you remember the row about that book Horace Simpson got?  I wish you could see the books the boys have here.  At least I don’t wish it, for I wish I didn’t look at them, the milkman brings them; he always will if you can pay him.  When I saw old Snuffy find one in Smith’s desk, I expected he would half kill him, but he didn’t do much to him, he only took the book away; and Lorraine says he never does beat them much for that, because he doesn’t want them to leave off buying them, because he wants them himself.  Don’t tell the Woods this.  Don’t tell Mother Jem and I cry, or else she’ll be miserable.  I don’t so much mind the beatings (Lorraine says you get hard in time), nor the washing at the sink—­nor the duff puddings—­but it is such a beastly hole, and he is such an old brute, and I feel so dreadful I can’t tell you.  Give my love to Mrs. Wood and to Mr. Wood, and to Carlo and to Mary Anne, and to your dear dear self, and to Isaac when you see him. 
                                      “And I am your affectionate friend,
          
                                                     “JACK.

“P.S.  Jem sends his best love, and he’s got two black eyes.

“P.S.  No. 2.  You would be sorry for Lorraine if you knew him.  Sometimes I’m afraid he’ll kill himself, for he says there’s really nothing in the Bible about suicide.  So I said—­killing yourself is as bad as killing anybody else.  So he said—­is stealing from yourself as bad as stealing from anybody else?  And we had a regular argue.  Some of the boys argle-bargle on Sundays, he says, but most of them fight.  When they differ, they put tin-tacks with the heads downwards on each other’s places on the forms in school, and if they run into you and you scream, old Snuffy beats you.  The milkman brings them, by the half-ounce, with very sharp points, if you can pay him.  Most of the boys are a horrid lot, and so dirty.  Lorraine is as dirty as the rest, and I asked him why, and he said it was because he’d thrown up the sponge; but he got rather red, and he’s washed himself cleaner this morning.  He says he has an uncle in India, and some time ago he wrote to him, and told him about Crayshaw’s, and gave the milkman a diamond pin, that had been his father’s, and Snuffy didn’t know about, to post it with plenty of stamps, but he thinks he can’t have put plenty on, for no answer ever came.  I’ve told him I’ll post another one for him in the holidays.  Don’t say anything about this back in your letters.  He reads ’em all.

“——­Monday.  I’ve caught the milkman at last, he’ll take it this evening.  The lessons here are regular rubbish.  I’m so glad I’ve a good knife, for if you have you can dig holes in your desk to put collections in.  The boy next to me has earwigs, but you have to keep a look-out, or he puts them in your ears.  I turned up a stone near the sink this morning, and got five wood-lice for mine.  It’s considered a very good collection.”