“What will you say if I guess where you are going to?” he inquired of Hugh, as they drove up to the station.
“Why, if you guess right, I shall say you must be a conjuror,” was the reply.
“I think you are going to Doctor Donkiestir’s school, at Tickletown. Am I right?”
“Quite, quite right,” exclaimed Hugh, clapping his hands in delighted surprise; “but you must be a conjuror; how did you contrive to find it out?”
Ernest enjoyed the mystification for a minute or so; then, casting his eyes on the box, observed quietly, “I was taught to read when I was a good little boy; and your brother has written that direction so plainly, that I must have been blind if I had not been able to decipher it.”
“Oh, you cheat! anybody could have done that,” returned Hugh, contemptuously; “and I to think you a conjuror: Why, I expected to see you take twenty eggs out of an empty bag, and make a boiled plum-pudding in your hat, like the man we-saw perform last year. I say, Percy, it strikes me I’ve been making a goose of myself.”
“Very decidedly,” was Percy’s quiet reply.