“Mamma has been telling Aunt Carey that Rob put poor little Armine under the pump for using bad language.”

“I say!” exclaimed John; “if that is not a cram!”

“You said you knew nothing of it,” said his mother.

“I said I didn’t do it.  No more I did,” said John.

“No more did Rob, I am sure,” said his mother.

But Johnny, though using no word of denial, made it evident that she was mistaken, as he answered in an odd tone of excuse, “Armie was cheeky.”

“But he didn’t use bad words!” said Caroline, and she met a look of comfortable response.

“Let us hear, John,” said his mother, now the most agitated.  “I can’t believe that Rob would so ill-treat a little fellow like Armie, even if he did lose his temper for a moment.  Was Armine impertinent?”

“Well, rather,” said John.  “He wouldn’t do Rob’s French exercise.”  And then-—as the ladies cried out, he added—-"O yes, he knows ever so much more French than Rob, and now Bobus is gone Rob could not get anyone else.”

“Bobus?”

“O yes, Bobus would do anybody’s exercises at a penny for Latin, two for French, and three for Greek,” said John, not aware of the shock he gave.

“And Armine would not?” said his mother.  “Was that it?”

“Not only that,” said John; “but the little beggar must needs up and say he would not help to act a falsehood, and you know nobody could stand that.”

Caroline understood the gravity of such an offence better than Ellen did, for that good lady had never had much in common with her boys after they outgrew the nursery.  She answered, “Armine was quite right.”

“So much the worse for him, I fear,” said Caroline.

“Yes,” said John, “it would have been all very well to give him a cuff and tell him to mind his own business.”

“All very well!” ejaculated his mother.

“But you know,” continued Johnny to his aunt, “the seniors are always mad at a junior being like that; and there was another fellow who dragged him to the great school pump, and put him in the trough, and they said they would duck him till he swore to do whatever Rob ordered.”

“Swore!” exclaimed his mother.  “You don’t mean that, Johnny?”

“Yes, I do, mamma,” said John.  “I would tell you the words, only you wouldn’t like them.  And Armine said it would be breaking the Third Commandment, which was the very way to aggravate them most.  So they pumped on his head, and tried if he would say it.  ‘No,’ he said.  ‘You may kill me like the forty martyrs, but I won’t,’ and of course that set them on to pump the more.”

“But, Johnny, did you see it all?” cried Caroline.  “How could you?”

“I couldn’t help it, Aunt Carey.”

“Yes, Aunt Carey,” again broke in Jessie, “he was held down.  That horrid—­well, I won’t say whom, Johnny—­held him, and his arm was so twisted and grazed that he was obliged to come to me to put some lily-leaves on it, and if he would but show it, it is all black and yellow still.”