saw this he smiled and nodded his white head, and said, “Never you mind me, sir.  They won’t sting the old bee-keeper.”  This assertion so completely turned my head that every other idea went out of it, and after saying “or in the earth beneath” three times, and getting no further, the parson called out, “Third Commandment?” and I was passed over—­“out of respect to the family,” as I was reminded for a twelvemonth afterwards—­and Jem pinched my leg to comfort me, and my mother sank down on the seat, and did not take her face out of her pocket-handkerchief till the workhouse boys were saying “the sacraments.”

My mother was our only teacher till Jem was nine and I was eight years old.  We had a thin, soft-backed reading book, bound in black cloth, on the cover of which in gold letters was its name, Chick-seed without Chick-weed; and in this book she wrote our names, and the date at the end of each lesson we conned fairly through.  I had got into Part II., which was “in words of four letters,” and had the chapter about the Ship in it, before Jem’s name figured at the end of the chapter about the Dog in Part I.

My mother was very glad that this chapter seemed to please Jem, and that he learned to read it quickly, for, good-natured as he was, Jem was too fond of fighting and laying about him:  and though it was only “in words of three letters,” this brief chapter contained a terrible story, and an excellent moral, which I remember well even now.

It was called “The Dog.”

“Why do you cry?  The Dog has bit my leg.  Why did he do so?  I had my bat and I hit him as he lay on the mat, so he ran at me and bit my leg.  Ah, you may not use the bat if you hit the Dog.  It is a hot day, and the Dog may go mad.  One day a Dog bit a boy in the arm, and the boy had his arm cut off, for the Dog was mad.  And did the boy die?  Yes, he did die in a day or two.  It is not fit to hit a Dog if he lie on the mat and is not a bad Dog.  Do not hit a Dog, or a cat, or a boy.”

Jem not only got through this lesson much better than usual, but he lingered at my mother’s knees, to point with his own little stumpy forefinger to each recurrence of the words “hit a Dog,” and read them all by himself.

“Very good boy,” said Mother, who was much pleased.  “And now read this last sentence once more, and very nicely.”

“Do—­not—­hit—­a—­dog—­or—­a—­cat—­or—­a—­boy,” read Jem in a high sing-song, and with a face of blank indifference, and then with a hasty dog’s-ear he turned back to the previous page, and spelled out, “I had my bat and I hit him as he lay on the mat” so well, that my mother caught him to her bosom and covered him with kisses.

“He’ll be as good a scholar as Jack yet!” she exclaimed.  “But don’t forget, my darling, that my Jem must never ’hit a dog, or a cat, or a boy.’  Now, love, you may put the book away.”