5. For a short time after a boy has taken up [such] a life [as, like] Arnold would have urged upon him, he has a hard time of it. He finds his judgment often at fault, his body and intellect running away with him into all sorts of pitfalls, and [he, himself] coming down with a crash.
6. “No, Pompey, I must preach whenever I see a chance of being listened to, [which, and this] I never did before.”
7. And now, my boys, you [who, whom] I want to get for readers, have you had enough? [Will, shall] you give in at once, and say you’re convinced, and let me begin my story, or will you have more of it? Remember, I’ve [only] been over [only] a little bit of a hillside yet—what you could ride round easily on your ponies in an hour.
8. To-day, however, [being, being the day of] the school-house match, none of the school-house præpostors [stay, stays] by the door to watch for truants of their side; there is carte blanche to the school-house fags to go where they like: “They trust to our honor,” as East proudly informs Tom; “they know [very well] that no school-house boy would cut the match [very well]. If he did [we’d, we should] very soon cut him, I can tell you.”
9. Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, [we come to, appears] a little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet underwood.
10. I [only] know [only] two English neighborhoods thoroughly, and [in each] within a circle of five miles, [within each] there is enough of interest and beauty to last any reasonable man his life. I believe this to be the case [almost] throughout the country [almost]; but each has a special attraction, and [neither, none] can be richer than the one I am speaking of and going to [very particularly] introduce to you [very particularly].
11. It’s very odd [how, that] almost all English boys love danger.
12. He wore an old full-bottomed wig, the gift of some dandy old Brown whom he had [in the middle of the last century] valeted [in the middle of the last century], [which habiliment, a habiliment which] Master Tom looked upon with considerable respect, not to say fear.
13. [It was he, He was the one] who bent the first pin with which Tom extracted his first stickleback out of [“Pebbly Brook,”] the little stream which ran through the village, [“Pebbly Brook”]. The first stickleback was a splendid fellow, with fabulous red and blue gills. Tom kept him in a small basin till the day of [his, the fish’s] death, and became a fisherman from that day.
14. His nurse told him that those good-natured looking women were in the constant habit of enticing children into the barges and taking [them, these] up to London and selling them, [which, a story which] Tom wouldn’t believe.