One of the young heroes, however, ran out from the rest, and scrambled up behind; where, having righted himself, and nodded to the guard, with “How do, Jem?” he turned short round to Tom, and after looking him over for a minute, began,—­

“I say, you fellow, is your name Brown?”

“Yes,” said Tom, in considerable astonishment, glad, however, to have lighted on some one already who seemed to know him.

“Ah, I thought so.  You know my old aunt, Miss East.  She lives somewhere down your way in Berkshire.  She wrote to me that you were coming to-day, and asked me to give you a lift.”

Tom was somewhat inclined to resent the patronizing air of his new friend, a boy of just about his own height and age, but gifted with the most transcendent coolness and assurance, which Tom felt to be aggravating and hard to bear, but couldn’t for the life of him help admiring and envying—­especially when young my lord begins hectoring two or three long loafing fellows, half porter, half stableman, with a strong touch of the blackguard, and in the end arranges with one of them, nicknamed Cooey, to carry Tom’s luggage up to the School-house for sixpence.

“And hark ’ee, Cooey; it must be up in ten minutes, or no more jobs from me.  Come along, Brown.”  And away swaggers the young potentate, with his hands in his pockets, and Tom at his side.

“All right, sir,” says Cooey, touching his hat, with a leer and a wink at his companions.

“Hullo though,” says East, pulling up, and taking another look at Tom; “this’ll never do.  Haven’t you got a hat?  We never wear caps here.  Only the louts wear caps.  Bless you, if you were to go into the quadrangle with that thing on, I don’t know what’d happen.”  The very idea was quite beyond young Master East, and he looked unutterable things.

Tom thought his cap a very knowing affair, but confessed that he had a hat in his hat-box; which was accordingly at once extracted from the hind-boot, and Tom equipped in his go-to-meeting roof, as his new friend called it.  But this didn’t quite suit his fastidious taste in another minute, being too shiny; so, as they walk up the town, they dive into Nixon’s the hatter’s, and Tom is arrayed, to his utter astonishment, and without paying for it, in a regulation cat-skin at seven-and-sixpence, Nixon undertaking to send the best hat up to the matron’s room, School-house, in half an hour.

“You can send in a note for a tile on Monday, and make it all right, you know,” said Mentor; “we’re allowed two seven-and-sixers a half, besides what we bring from home.”

Tom by this time began to be conscious of his new social position and dignities, and to luxuriate in the realized ambition of being a public school-boy at last, with a vested right of spoiling two seven-and-sixers in half a year.