“You’re a queer boy!  Of course, he won’t trouble himself about that. 
You don’t seem to mind it,” he continued, eying Hector curiously.

“Oh, no.”

“Perhaps you think Jim can’t hurt.  I know better than that.”

“Did he ever thrash you, then?”

“Half a dozen times.”

“Why didn’t you tell his uncle?”

“It would be no use.  Jim would tell his story, and old Sock would believe him.  But here’s Mr. Crabb, the usher, the man I was to introduce you to.”

Hector looked up, and saw advancing a young man, dressed in rusty black, with a meek and long-suffering expression, as one who was used to being browbeaten.  He was very shortsighted, and wore eyeglasses.

CHAPTER XIII.

In the schoolroom.

“Mr. Crabb,” said Wilkins, “this is the new scholar, Roscoe.  Mr. Smith asked me to bring him to you.”

“Ah, indeed!” said Crabb, adjusting his glasses, which seemed to sit uneasily on his nose.  “I hope you are well, Roscoe?”

“Thank you, sir; my health is good.”

“The schoolbell will ring directly.  Perhaps you had better come into the schoolroom and select a desk.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Are you a classical scholar, Roscoe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how far may you have gone now?” queried Crabb.

“I was reading the fifth book of Virgil when I left off study.”

“Really, you are quite a scholar.  I suppose you don’t know any Greek?”

“I was in the second book of the Anabasis.”

“You will go into the first class, then.  I hope you will become one of the ornaments of the institute.”

“Thank you.  Is the first class under Mr. Smith?”

“No; I teach the first class,” said Crabb, with a modest cough.

“I thought the principal usually took the first class himself?”

“Mr. Smith comes into the room occasionally and supervises, but he has too much business on hand to teach regularly himself.”

“Is Mr. Smith a good scholar?” asked Hector.

“Ahem!” answered Mr. Crabb, evidently embarrassed; “I presume so.  You should not ask Ahem! irrelevant questions.”

In fact, Mr. Crabb had serious doubts as to the fact assumed.  He knew that whenever a pupil went to the principal to ask a question in Latin or Greek, he was always referred to Crabb himself, or some other teacher.  This, to be sure, proved nothing, but in an unguarded moment, Mr. Smith had ventured to answer a question himself, and his answer was ludicrously incorrect.

The schoolroom was a moderate-sized, dreary-looking room, with another smaller room opening out of it, which was used as a separate recitation room.

“Here is a vacant desk,” said Mr. Crabb, pointing out one centrally situated.

“I think that will do.  Who sits at the next desk?”