with this virtuous resolution, he went to school only to find that Harry’s version of his character had preceded him, and that life was a burden in consequence. He took stock of his associates. Some of them were unclean, some of them talked in dialect, many dropped their h’s, and there were two Jews and a negro, or some one quite as dark, in the assembly. ‘That’s a hubshi,’ said Black Sheep to himself. ‘Even Meeta used to laugh at a hubshi. I don’t think this is a proper place.’ He was indignant for at least an hour, till he reflected that any expostulation on his part would be by Aunty Rosa construed into ‘showing off,’ and that Harry would tell the boys.

‘How do you like school?’ said Aunty Rosa at the end of the day.

‘I think it is a very nice place,’ said Punch quietly.

‘I suppose you warned the boys of Black Sheep’s character?’ said Aunty Rosa to Harry.

‘Oh yes,’ said the censor of Black Sheep’s morals. ‘They know all about him.’

‘If I was with my father,’ said Black Sheep, stung to the quick, ‘I shouldn’t speak to those boys. He wouldn’t let me. They live in shops. I saw them go into shops—where their fathers live and sell things.’

‘You’re too good for that school, are you?’ said Aunty Rosa, with a bitter smile. ‘You ought to be grateful, Black Sheep, that those boys speak to you at all. It isn’t every school that takes little liars.’

Harry did not fail to make much capital out of Black Sheep’s ill-considered remark; with the result that several boys, including the hubshi, demonstrated to Black Sheep the eternal equality of the human race by smacking his head, and his consolation from Aunty Rosa was that it ‘served him right for being vain.’ He learned, however, to keep his opinions to himself, and by propitiating Harry in carrying books and the like to get a little peace. His existence was not too joyful. From nine till twelve he was at school, and from two to four, except on Saturdays. In the evenings he was sent down into the nursery to prepare his lessons for the next day, and every night came the dreaded cross-questionings at Harry’s hand. Of Judy he saw but little. She was deeply religious—at six years of age Religion is easy to come by—and sorely divided between her natural love for Black Sheep and her love for Aunty Rosa, who could do no wrong.

The lean woman returned that love with interest, and Judy, when she dared, took advantage of this for the remission of Black Sheep’s penalties. Failures in lessons at school were punished at home by a week without reading other than school-books, and Harry brought the news of such a failure with glee. Further, Black Sheep was then bound to repeat his lessons at bedtime to Harry, who generally succeeded in making him break down, and consoled him by gloomiest forebodings for the morrow. Harry was at once spy, practical joker, inquisitor, and Aunty Rosa’s deputy executioner. He filled his many posts to admiration. From his actions, now that Uncle Harry was dead, there was no appeal. Black Sheep had not been permitted to keep any selfrespect at school: at home he was, of course, utterly discredited, and grateful for any pity that the servant girls—they changed frequently at Downe Lodge because they, too, were liars—might show. ‘You’re just fit to row in the same boat with Black Sheep,’ was a sentiment that each new Jane or Eliza might expect to hear, before a month was over, from Aunty Rosa’s lips; and Black Sheep was used to ask new girls whether they had yet been compared to him. Harry was ‘Master Harry’ in their mouths; Judy was officially ‘Miss Judy’; but Black Sheep was never anything more than Black Sheep tout court.

As time went on and the memory of Papa and Mamma became wholly overlaid by the unpleasant task of writing them letters, under Aunty Rosa’s eye, each Sunday, Black Sheep forgot what manner of life he had led in the beginning of things. Even Judy’s appeals to ‘try and remember about Bombay’ failed to quicken him.

‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘I know I used to give orders and Mamma kissed me.’

‘Aunty Rosa will kiss you if you are good,’ pleaded Judy.