Jem stuck out his lips and looked down, and hesitated.  He seemed almost disposed to go on with his lessons.  But he changed his mind, and shutting the book with a bang, he scampered off.  As he passed the ottoman near the door, he saw Kitty, our old tortoise-shell puss, lying on it, and (moved perhaps by the occurrence of the word cat in the last sentence of the lesson) he gave her such a whack with the flat side of Chick-seed that she bounced up into the air like a sky-rocket, Jem crying out as he did so, “I had my bat, and I hit him as he lay on the mat.”

It was seldom enough that Jem got anything by heart, but he had certainly learned this; for when an hour later I went to look for him in the garden, I found him panting with the exertion of having laid my nice, thick, fresh green crop of mustard and cress flat with the back of the coal-shovel, which he could barely lift, but with which he was still battering my salad-bed, chanting triumphantly at every stroke, “I had my bat, and I hit him as he lay on the mat.”  He was quite out of breath, and I had not much difficulty in pummelling him as he deserved.

Which shows how true it is, as my dear mother said, that “you never know what to do for the best in bringing up boys.”

Just about the time that we outgrew Chick-seed, and that it was allowed on all hands that even for quiet country-folk with no learned notions it was high time we were sent to school, our parents were spared the trouble of looking out for a school for us by the fact that a school came to us instead, and nothing less than an “Academy” was opened within three-quarters of a mile of my father’s gate.

Walnut-tree Farm was an old house that stood some little way from the road in our favourite lane—­a lane full of wild roses and speedwell, with a tiny footpath of disjointed flags like an old pack-horse track.  Grass and milfoil grew thickly between the stones, and the turf stretched half-way over the road from each side, for there was little traffic in the lane, beyond the yearly rumble of the harvesting waggons; and few foot-passengers, except a labourer now and then, a pair or two of rustic lovers at sundown, a few knots of children in the blackberry season, and the cows coming home to milking.

Jem and I played there a good deal, but then we lived close by.

We were very fond of the old place and there were two good reasons for the charm it had in our eyes.  In the first place, the old man who lived alone in it (for it had ceased to be the dwelling-house of a real farm) was an eccentric old miser, the chief object of whose existence seemed to be to thwart any attempt to pry into the daily details of it.  What manner of stimulus this was to boyish curiosity needs no explanation, much as it needs excuse.

In the second place, Walnut-tree Farm was so utterly different from the house which was our home, that everything about it was attractive from mere unaccustomedness.