“Very well; you’ll catch it another time, let me promise you.”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Ernest’s companion. “I’m glad you treated him so. It’s the only way. If I was bigger I would, but he thrashes me so unmercifully whenever I stick up against him that I’ve got rather sick of opposing him.”
“Help me,” said Ernest, “and we’ll see what can be done.”
The other boy put out his hand, and pressing that of the new-comer, said, “I will.” The compact was then and there sealed, not to be broken; and the boys felt that they understood each other.
“What is your name?” said Ernest. “It is curious that I should not know it, and yet I feel as if I was a friend of yours.”
“My name is John Buttar,” answered the boy. “I have heard yours. You are to be in our room, for the matron told me a new boy was coming to-day, though I little thought what sort of a fellow he was to be. But come along, I’ll show you round the bounds. We may not go outside for the next three weeks, for some of the big fellows got into a row, and we have been kept in ever since.”
So Johnny Butter, as he was called, ran on. He let Ernest into the politics of the school, and gave him a great deal of valuable information.
Ernest listened attentively, and asked several questions on important points, all of which Buttar answered in a satisfactory way.
“This is a very jolly place altogether, you see,” he remarked; “what is wrong is generally owing to our own faults, or rather to that of the big fellows. For instance, the Doctor knows nothing of the bullying which goes forward; if he knew what sort of a fellow Blackall is he would very soon send him to the right-about, I suspect. We might tell of him, of course, but that would never do, so he goes on and gets worse and worse. The only way is to set up against him as you did to-day. If everybody did that we should soon put him down.”
Ernest was very much interested in all he saw. Notwithstanding the example he had just had, he thought that it might be a very good sort of place. Buttar introduced him to several boys, who, he said, were very nice fellows; so that before many hours had passed Ernest found himself with a considerable number of acquaintances, and even Dawson and Bouldon condescended to speak rationally to him.