flaming face and red eyes like Bob Furniss’s ferret and great big whiskers; but I’ll make you a picture of him, at least I’ll make two pictures, for Lewis Lorraine says he’s got no beard on Sundays, and rather a good one on Saturdays.  Lorraine is a very rum fellow, but I like him.  It was he showed us in, and he did catch it afterwards, but he only makes fun of it.  Old Crayshaw’s desk had got a lot of canes on one side of it and a most beastly dirty snuffy red and green handkerchief on the other, and an ink-pot in the middle.  He made up to Father like anything and told such thumpers.  He said there were six boys in one room, but really there’s twelve.  Jem and I sleep together.  There’s nothing to wash in and no prayers.  If you say them you get boots at your head, and one hit Jem behind the ear, so I pulled his sleeve and said, ‘Get up, you can say them in bed,’ But you know Jem, and he said, ’Wait till I’ve done, God bless Father and Mother,’ and when he had, he went in and fought, and I backed him up, and them old Crayshaw found us, and oh, how he did beat us!

“——­Wednesday.  Old Snuffy is a regular brute, and I don’t care if he finds this and sees what I say.  But he won’t, for the milkman is taking it.  He always does if you can pay him.  But I’ve put most of my money into the bank.  Three of the top boys have a bank, and we all have to deposit, only I kept fourpence in one of my boots.  They give us bank-notes for a penny and a halfpenny; they make them themselves.  The sweet-shop takes them.  They only give you eleven penny notes for a shilling in the bank, or else it would burst.  At dinner we have a lot of pudding to begin with, and it’s very heavy.  You can hardly eat anything afterwards.  The first day Lorraine said quite out loud and very polite, ‘Did you say duff before meat, young gentlemen?’ and I couldn’t help laughing, and old Snuffy beat his head horridly with his dirty fists.  But Lorraine minds nothing; he says he knows old Snuffy will kill him some day, but he says he doesn’t want to live, for his father and mother are dead; he only wants to catch old Snuffy in three more booby-traps before he dies.  He’s caught him in four already.  You see, when old Snuffy is cat-walking he wears goloshes that he may sneak about better, and the way Lorraine makes booby-traps is by balancing cans of water on the door when it’s ajar, so that he gets doused, and the can falls on his head, and strings across the bottom of the door, not far from the ground, so that he catches his goloshes and comes down.  The other fellows say that old Crayshaw had a lot of money given him in trust for Lorraine, and he’s spent it all, and Lorraine has no one to stick up for him, and that’s why Crayshaw hates him.