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ÒÐÅÊ 08_03

"I'd like to stay," I answered quickly.

"Good," said Mr. Wickfield, smiling his approval. "I am very glad. You are good company for Agnes, and for me too."

Ah, those happy, happy schooldays! How quickly they passed, so that now they seem like a half-sleeping, half-wak-ing dream.

What do I best remember? What can I see, now, with my mind's eye?

Soon I am not the last boy in the school. I have risen, in a few months, over several heads. But the head boy seems to me a mighty creature, far, far above me, at a height to which I could never rise myself. But I do rise higher in the school, and Dr. Strong refers to me in public as a most promising young scholar. I also earn something of a name on the field of battle. I see before me the face of a young butcher. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth of Canterbury. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked young butcher, with rough red cheeks, and he is in the habit of stopping the smaller boys of Dr. Strong's, in order that he may punch their heads. He even calls challenges after me in the open streets. For these reasons I make up my mind to fight the butcher.

It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a wall. I meet the butcher by appointment, and we stand face to face. In a moment he hits out, and seems to light ten thousand candles from my left eyebrow. In another moment, I don't know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the butcher, we are so mixed up as we struggle and knock each other about on the grass. I seem to hit him a great deal without his even noticing and then he hits me in a way that I notice very much. At last I awake, very dizzy about the head, flat on my back on the grass, and see the butcher walking off. I know, then, that the victory is his.

I go home in a sorry condition, and stay there for three or four days, with two beautiful black eyes. I tell Agnes all about the butcher, and the wrongs he has heaped upon me. She thinks I couldn't do otherwise than fight him, while she trembles at the thought of my doing so.

Then comes a day when Adams has left the school, and I am head boy in his place. I look down at the little boys at the bottom of the school, and remember the time when I was a little fellow like them.
Now I am seventeen and wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and use a great deal of grease on my hair. Am I in love again? I am! In fact, I am never out of love, with one young lady or another.

And the little girl I saw that first day at Mr. Wickfield's, where is she? What has happened to her? She has gone. In her place, there is someone who is not a child. Agnes-my sister, as I have learned to think of her-is now a woman; still as calm and good as ever, but soon to become aware of a shadow that will darken her life.



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