February 12th.—It's awful hard work to grind away like this—as I have the last two days. It ain't so easy to do lessons on the square, when one has been using cribs for ever so long; and then, grind as much as you may, the lessons don't look so well after all when one is a duffer at them, as I am. Yesterday I sat poring over one book for hours and hours, trying to make out what it meant. I suppose I ought to know well enough by this time, for I've learned it all up to there; but then I've used cribs, and Swain don't know that, and so he pitched into me, and threatened a heavy imposition if ever I took up such another piece of construing. It's easy enough talking about always doing the square thing, and it mightn't be so hard if I'd always done it; but I haven't, and there's the rub.
February 16th.—There's no end of a row with the fellows over these cribs. I've always used them, and I always shall, they say; and Tom backs them, and tells them I'm tied to Miss Chandos's apron-strings.
It began about another wretched construe I handed in to Swain.
"Is this your own work, Stewart?" asked Swain; and I thought it was so good he could hardly believe I had done it, and I said, quite proudly, "Yes, sir, I've done every word of it."
"Then all I can say is, you have no right to be in this division of the school; and I shall talk to the Doctor about it." He was turning over the leaves of the exercise-book while he was talking; and presently, turning up one of the cribs, he said, "Look here, Stewart; who did this?"
"I wrote that a month ago, sir," I said.
"Yes, I know you wrote it, but who did the construing?"
I looked at Swain, and then at the map on the wall, for I didn't know who had done it. I always did my lessons with Tom and the rest, and they managed the cribs somehow, and I just copied them off the slips of paper Jackson or some of the fellows handed to me.
"You have been using cribs, sir," thundered Swain; and then he looked round at the other fellows, who were all very busy over their books.
I wished for once that the schoolroom floor was like the ice on the alder pond, and I could slip through out of sight, for I couldn't tell a direct lie about it; and Swain had cornered me so that there was no other way of getting out of it. So I said nothing, though I knew I should catch it from Tom and the rest when we got into the playground, for I could see by Swain's looks that he suspected cribs had been used by all the lot.