“I’m late, as usual,” Tom said, rolling his gum from side to side in his mouth.  “I presume I’ll catch thunder, but I don’t care.  I’m not afraid of any schoolmarm I’ve ever seen, and I mean to carry the new one out on a couple of chips if she tries to boss me.”

There was a look on Tom’s face which Jack did not like, but he said pleasantly, “No, you won’t, when you see how helpless she is, and how she needs a young gentleman like you to stand by her.”

“I ain’t a gentleman,” Tom answered, but his voice was a good deal softened.  “I’m just Tom Walker, who they lay everything to, and who the boys expect to do all their dirty work for them.”

“I see,” Jack answered; “you pick off the hot chestnuts. I used to do that when a little shaver, till I got my fingers blistered so badly I decided to let some one else get burned in my place.”

“Did you ever cut up at school?” Tom asked, with a growing interest in and respect for Jack, who replied, “Oh, yes, I was pretty bad sometimes, and am ashamed of it when I remember how I annoyed some of my teachers.  I have asked pardon of one or two of the ladies when I have chanced to meet them, but I never could have annoyed Miss Smith, nor will you when you know her.  You haven’t seen her yet?”

“Nope!” Tom answered.  “I hear she ain’t bigger than my thumb, and awful pretty, Tim Biggs says, and he is threatening to thrash anybody who is mean to her.  I’d laugh to see him tackle me!”

“He’ll have no occasion to, for I predict you will be the warmest champion Miss Smith has.  See if you are not,” Jack said, offering his hand to Tom, as they had now reached the school-house.

“He is certainly a good deal of a ruffian,” Jack said to himself as he went on his way, while Tom was not quite so sure of the two chips on which he was to carry Eloise out if she tried to boss him.  He’d wait and see.  That city chap from Crompton Place had certainly been very friendly, and had not treated him as if he was scum; and after taking his seat and telling Ruby Ann, with quite an air when she asked why he was so late, that he had been detained by Mr. Harcourt, who wanted to talk with him, he took from his desk his slate and rubbed out the caricature he had drawn the day before of a young girl on crutches trying to get up the steps of the school-house.  He was intending to show it to Tim Biggs and make him angry, and to the other scholars and make them laugh, and thus ferment a prejudice against Eloise, for no reason at all except the natural depravity of his nature.

The word “champion” kept sounding in his ears, and he wrote it two or three times on his slate, where the girl on crutches had been.  “I always supposed champion belonged to prize-fighters, but Mr. Harcourt didn’t mean that kind.  He meant I was to stand up for her and behave myself.  Well, I’ll see what kind of craft she is,” he thought.

With this decision Tom took up his lessons, and had never been more studious and well behaved than he was that day.