First in the Field | Page 2

Green, "getting yourself put in a school among young gentlemen. I don't know what the doctor was thinking about to take a convict's son."
"My father is not a convict," cried Dominic angrily.
"Oh, isn't he, just. Transported for life. We know, don't we, boys?"
"Yes--yes," was chorused.
"Of course he was," cried Green. "You can't keep these things quiet. Pretends his father is a settler. Yes; the judge settled him for life."
The boy looked round for applause, and received it sufficiently to make him go on with his banter.
"Just as if we weren't sure to find out the truth. Calls him a squatter. Yes; the government made him squat pretty quickly."
There was another laugh as the boys wandered on along the edge of the great common, where the quickset hedge divided it from the cultivated land, high above which a lark was circling and singing with all its might.
"I want to know why the doctor lets him stop amongst gentlemen's sons."
"I know, Bry Green," said a mischievous-looking, dark-eyed boy; "it's because his father pays."
"He wouldn't be here long if his father didn't," said Green laughingly.
"Unless he supplied the doctor with sugar and soap and candles and soda and blue."
There was a roar of laughter once more, in which Dominic Braydon joined, and Green turned so suddenly on the last speaker that the young thrushes were nearly jerked out of the nest.
"Do you want me to give you a wipe on the mouth, Tomlins?" cried the boy angrily.
"Oh no, sir; please don't, sir," was the reply, with a display of mock horror and dread; "only you said gentlemen's sons, sir,--and I thought what a pity it was Nic Braydon's father wasn't a grocer."
"My father's a wholesale dealer in the City," said Green loftily; "and it's only as a favour that he lets old Dunham have things from his warehouse at trade price."
"Ho, ho, ho! here's a game!" cried the dark boy, throwing himself down on the velvety turf and kicking out his legs in his delight.
"My father isn't a poor parson," continued Green contemptuously; "and if any of you fellows like to call on me during the holidays, any one will show you Alderman Green's big house on Clapham Common. We keep a butler, footman, coachman, and three gardeners."
"And the gardeners make all the beds," said Tomlins, at which there was another laugh.
"You're a little idiot, Tomlins," said Green loftily.
"Yes, sir; but I can't help it," said the boy meekly. "You see my father never brought home turtle soup from the Lord Mayor's dinner so as to make me big and fat."
"You won't be happy till I've rubbed your ugly snub nose against the next tree," cried Green. "Get up, you gipsy-looking cub!"
He stepped quickly as he spoke to where the boy still lay upon the green and kicked him viciously.
"Oh!" yelled the boy, who began to writhe now in earnest as he fought hard to control himself, but in vain, for he rose to his knees at last with the tears coming fast, and then limped slowly along, sobbing bitterly.
"Serve you right," cried Green. "Teach you not to be so jolly saucy. Now then, none of your sham. I didn't hurt you much. Go on."
"I--I can't yet," sobbed the boy.
"Oh yes, you can. None of that. Here, carry these."
He thrust the nest of young thrushes into the boy's hand, and forced him to proceed, limping heavily.
"Look at the little humbug," cried Green, as they all went on, with Dominic Braydon hanging down his head and gazing hard at the ground to keep from darting indignant glances at the tyrant who had bullied and insulted him till it had been almost beyond bearing. He felt a choking sensation in the throat, and an intense longing to do something; but his ways were peaceful, and Green, was heavy, big, and strong. In addition, he was cock of the school, to whom every one had yielded for a long time past; and Dominic Braydon had still fresh in his memory that day when he had resisted a piece of tyranny and fought at the far end of the school garden, where an unlucky blow on the bridge of the nose had half blinded him and made him an easy victim to the enemy, who administered a severe drubbing and procured for his adversary a birching for fighting--it was before caning days--and a long series of impositions for obstinacy, a trait the doctor said that he absolutely abhorred--Dominic's obstinacy consisting in a stubborn refusal to confess who had beaten him. This his schoolfellows called honourable; but Green had other opinions, and set it down to the fear of getting another thrashing for telling tales.
But Green was not quite correct.
And so on this bright spring half-holiday the boys went on along the side of the common toward the