"I want," answered the boy, speaking as though half ashamed of the request he was making—"I want you to wear it when you wear the brooch; stick it somewhere on your chain. I should like, don't you know, to feel I'm one of your family."
"So you are," answered Queen Mab, kissing him. "So you are, and always will be—my own boy Jack!"
CHAPTER VII.
STRIFE IN THE UPPER FOURTH.
"'You are exceedingly ugly,' said the wild ducks."—The Ugly Duckling.
School was a great change after Brenlands. The rooms seemed barer, the desks more inky, and the bread and butter a good eighth of an inch thicker than they had been at the close of the previous term; but by the end of the first week our two friends had settled to work, and things were going on much the same as usual.
Considerable alterations had been made in the composition of the Upper Fourth. Most of the occupants of the front row of benches had got their remove, while a number of boys from the lower division, of whom Valentine was one, had come up to join Mr. Rowlands' class. The Long Dormitory was also changed, and Jack now found himself in Number Eight, sleeping in a bed next to that of his cousin.
Being thus so much thrown together, both in and out of school, it was only natural that the friendship which they had formed in the holidays should be still more firmly established. Only one thing acted as a drag upon it, and that was the fact of Jack's still finding a strong counter-attraction in the society of Garston, Rosher, and Teal.
The quartette began the term badly by being largely responsible for a disturbance which occurred in the dining-hall, when a clockwork frog was suddenly discovered disporting itself in Pilson's teacup; and it is probable that Jack would have continued to distinguish himself as a black sheep, in company with his three unruly classmates, had it not been for an unforeseen occurrence which caused him to make a change in his choice of friends.