hard fling, equal to a slinger’s, relieving J. Masner of a foremost assailant with a spanker on the nob.  They may have fancied him clever for selecting a position rather comfortable, as things went, until they had sight of him with his little French ally and two others, ammunition boys to rear, descending one bank and scaling another right into the flank of the enemy, when his old tower of a Masner was being heavily pressed by numbers.  Then came a fight hand to hand, but the enemy stood in a clamp; not to split like a nut between crackers, they gave way and rolled, backing in lumps from bank to ditch.

The battle was over before the young ladies knew.  They wondered to see Matey shuffling on his coat and hopping along at easy bounds to pay his respects to Miss Vincent, near whom was Browny; and this time he and Browny talked together.  He then introduced little Emile to her.  She spoke of Napoleon at Brienne, and complimented Matey.  He said he was cavalry, not artillery, that day.  They talked to hear one another’s voices.  By constantly appealing to Miss Vincent he made their conversation together seem as under her conduct; and she took a slide on some French phrases with little Emile.  Her young ladies looked shrinking and envious to see the fellows wet to the skin, laughing, wrestling, linking arms; and some, who were clown-faced with a wipe of scarlet, getting friends to rub their cheeks with snow, all of them happy as larks in air, a big tea steaming for them at the school.  Those girls had a leap and a fail of the heart, glad to hug themselves in their dry clothes, and not so warm as the dripping boys were, nor so madly fond of their dress-circle seats to look on at a play they were not allowed even to desire to share.  They looked on at blows given and taken in good temper, hardship sharpening jollity.  The thought of the difference between themselves and the boys must have been something like the tight band—­call it corset—­over the chest, trying to lift and stretch for draughts of air.  But Browny’s feeling naturally was, that all this advantage for the boys came of Matey Weyburn’s lead.

Miss Vincent with her young ladies walked off in couples, orderly chicks, the usual Sunday march of their every day.  The school was coolish to them; one of the fellows hummed bars of some hymn tune, rather faster than church.  And next day there was a murmur of letters passing between Matey and Browny regularly, little Collett for postman.  Anybody might have guessed it, but the report spread a feeling that girls are not the entirely artificial beings or flat targets we suppose.  The school began to brood, like air deadening on oven-heat.  Winter is hen-mother to the idea of love in schools, if the idea has fairly entered.  Various girls of different colours were selected by boys for animated correspondence, that never existed and was vigorously prosecuted, with efforts to repress contempt of them in courtship for their affections.  They found their part of it by no