The child who gave good advice went to school.  There was a rage for stag beetles at the school; the boys painted them and made them run races on a chessboard.  They imagined—­rightly or wrongly—­that some stag beetles were much faster than others.  A little boy called Bell possessed the stag beetle which was the favourite for the coming races.  Another boy called Mason was consumed with longing for this stag beetle; and Bell had said he would give it to him in exchange for Mason’s catapult, which was famous in the school for the unique straightness of its two prongs.  Mason went to the boy who gave good advice and asked him for his opinion.  “Don’t swap it for your catty,” said the boy who gave good advice, “because Bell’s stag beetle may not win after all; and even if it does stag beetles won’t be the rage for very long; but a catty is always a catty, and yours is the best in the school.”  Mason took the advice.  When the races came off, the stag beetles were so erratic that no prize was awarded, and they immediately ceased to be the rage.  The rage for stag beetles was succeeded by a rage for secret alphabets.  One boy invented a secret alphabet made of simple hieroglyphics, which was imparted only to a select few, who spent their spare time in corresponding with each other by these cryptic signs.  The boy who gave good advice was not of those initiated into the mystery of the cypher, and he longed to be.  He made several overtures, but they were all rejected, the reason being that boys of the second division could not let a “third division squit” into their secret.  At last the boy who gave good advice offered to one of the initiated the whole of his stamp collection in return for the secret of the alphabet.  This offer was accepted.  The boy took the stamp collection, but the boy who gave good advice received in return not the true alphabet but a sham one especially manufactured for him.  This he found out later; but recriminations were useless; besides which the rage for secret alphabets soon died out and was replaced by a rage for aquariums, newts, and natterjack toads.

The boy went to a public school.  He was a fag.  His fag-master had two fags.  One morning the other fag came to the boy who gave good advice and said:  “Clarke (he was the fag-master) told me three days ago to clean his football boots.  He’s been ‘staying out’ and hasn’t used them, and I forgot.  He’ll want them to-day, and now there isn’t time.  I shall pretend I did clean them.”

“No, don’t do that,” said the boy who gave good advice, “because if you say you have cleaned them he will lick you twice as much for having cleaned them badly—­say you forgot.”  The advice was taken, and the fag-master merely said:  “Don’t forget again.”  A little later the fag-master had some friends to tea, and told the boy who gave good advice to boil him six eggs for not more than three minutes and a half.  The boy who gave good advice, while they were on the fire, took part in a rag that which was going on in the passage; the result was that the eggs remained seven minutes in boiling water.  They were hard.  When the fag-master pointed this out and asked his fag what he meant by it, the boy who gave good advice persisted in his statement that they had been exactly three minutes and a half in the saucepan, and that he had timed them by his watch.  So the fag-master caned him for telling lies.