"I didn't know," she said in a very melancholy voice. "I only wanted to find some loose fevvers for Ted."

"I know that, dear," said her mother. "Only if you had asked me you would have got the feathers without breaking my vase. Come with me now, and you'll show me what you want."

There proved to be two or three loose feathers as Ted had said—beautiful rainbow eyes, which would not be missed from the screen with the careful way in which Ted's mother cut them out, and the children carried them off in delight. They were neatly tacked on to the feather card, which had a very fine effect on the wall of the museum. And for both Ted and Cissy there was a little lesson, though the two were of different kinds, fastened up with the feathers on the card.

"They were neatly tacked on to the feather card, which had a very
fine effect on the wall of the museum"
Click to [ENLARGE]

Before long the holidays were over. Percy went back to school, and poor Ted hid himself for a few hours, as he always did on these sad occasions, that his red eyes might not be seen. Then he came out again, looking paler than usual, but quite cheerful and bright. Still he missed Percy so much that he was not at all sorry that his own holidays were over. For Ted now went early every morning to a regular big school—a school at which there were so many boys that some little fellows of his age might have felt frightened and depressed. But not so Ted. He went on his own cheery way without misgiving. The world to his thinking was a nice and happy place—not all sunshine of course, but very good of its kind. And school-life, though it too had its shadows, was full of interest and satisfaction. Ted loved his fellows, and never doubted, in his simple taking-for-granted of things being as they should be, but that he was loved by them; and how this way of looking out on the world helped him through its difficulties, how it saved him from unreasonable fears and exaggerated anxieties such as take the bloom off many a child-life, it would be difficult for me to describe. I can only try to put you in the way of imagining this bright young life for yourselves.

The boy whom, of course only next to his dear Percy, Ted loved best in the world was, to use his own words, "a fellow" of about his own age, whose name was Rex. That is to say, his short name; for his real one was Reginald, just as Ted's was Edmond. They had been together at the big school from the first of Ted's going, being about equal in their standing as to classes, though Rex was rather the elder, and had been longer at school. At Ted's school, as at all others, there were quarrels and fights sometimes; and many a day he came home with traces of war, in the shapes of bumps and bruises and scratches. Not that the battles were all quarrels,—there were plenty of good-tempered scrimmages, as well as, occasionally, more serious affrays, for boys will be boys all the world over. And, worse than that, in all schools there are to be found boys of mean and tyrannical spirit, who love to bully and tease, and who need to be put down now and then. And in all schools, too, there are boys of good and kindly feelings, but of hasty and uncontrolled temper, and they too have to be taught to give and take, to bear and forbear. And then, too, as the best of boys are but boys after all, we are still a long way off having any reason to expect that the best of schools even can be like dovecots.

I don't know that Ted's school was worse than others in these respects, and Ted himself was not of a quarrelsome nature, but still in some ways he was not very patient. And then, slight and rather delicate though he was, he assuredly had a spirit of his own. He couldn't stand bullying, either of himself or others, and without any calculation as to the odds for or against him, he would plunge himself into the thick of the fray; and but for Rex, who was always ready to back up Ted, I daresay he would often have come off worse than he did. As it was, many were the wounds that fell to his share, and yet he managed, by his quickness and nimbleness, to escape more serious damage.

"What have you been doing with yourself, my boy?" his mother said one day not long after the grand doing-up of the museum, when Ted appeared in her room on his return from school, to beg for some sticking-plaister and arnica lotion. He really looked rather an object, and he could not help laughing as he caught sight of his face in the glass; for one eye was very much swollen, and a long scratch down his nose did not add to his beauty.

"I am a fright," he said. "But there's not much the matter, mother. It was only a scrimmage—we were all quite good friends."