‘Do you think French useful in a military education, sir?’

And Boddy said, ‘Yes, of course it is.’

Says Heriot, ‘Then I think I shall take lessons.’

Boddy told him he was taking lessons in the school.

‘Oh!’ says Heriot, ‘I mean private lessons’; and here he repeated one of Temple’s pieces of communication:  ’so much more can be imparted in a private lesson!’

Boddy sprang half up from his seat.  ‘Row, sir, and don’t talk,’ he growled.

’Sit, sir, and don’t dance in the boat, if you please, or the lady will be overset,’ said Heriot.

Julia requested to be allowed to land and walk home.  Boddy caught the rudder lines and leapt on the bank to hand her out; then all the boys in her boat and in Catman’s shouted, ’Miss Julia! dear Miss Julia, don’t leave us!’ and we heard wheedling voices:  ‘Don’t go off with him alone!’ Julia bade us behave well or she would not be able to come out with us.  At her entreaty Boddy stepped back to his post, and the two boats went forward like swans that have done ruffling their feathers.

The boys were exceedingly disappointed that no catastrophe followed the events of the day.  Heriot, they thought, might have upset the boat, saved Julia, and drowned Boddy, and given us a feast of pleasurable excitement:  instead of which Boddy lived to harass us with his tyrannical impositions and spiteful slaps, and it was to him, not to our Heriot, that Julia was most gracious.  Some of us discussed her conduct.

‘She’s a coquette,’ said little Temple.  I went off to the French dictionary.

‘Is Julia Rippenger a coquette, Heriot?’ I asked him.

‘Keep girls out of your heads, you little fellows,’ said he, dealing me a smart thump.

‘Is a coquette a nasty girl?’ I persisted.

‘No, a nice one, as it happens,’ was his answer.

My only feeling was jealousy of the superior knowledge of the sex possessed by Temple, for I could not fathom the meaning of coquette; but he had sisters.  Temple and I walked the grounds together, mutually declaring how much we would forfeit for Heriot’s sake.  By this time my Sunday visits to Julia had been interdicted:  I was plunged, as it were, in the pit of the school, and my dreams of my father were losing distinctness.  A series of boxes on the ears from Boddy began to astound and transform me.  Mr. Rippenger, too, threatened me with carvings, though my offences were slight.  ‘Yes,’ said Temple and I, in chorus, ‘but you daren’t strike Heriot!’ This was our consolation, and the sentiment of the school.  Fancy, then, our amazement to behold him laying the cane on Heriot’s shoulders as fiercely as he could, and Boddy seconding him.  The scene was terrible.  We were all at our desks doing evening tasks for the morrow, a great matchday at cricket, Boddy watching over us, and bellowing, ’Silence at your work, you lazy fellows, if you want lessons to be finished at ten in the morning!’ A noise came growing up to us from below, up the stairs from the wet-weather shed, and Heriot burst into the room, old Rippenger after him, panting.