"'Twas only those big boys," said Johnny Bell; "now they've gone off. Come, let's play something." "I should think you'd be willing for us to laugh," added honest little Willy Snow; "we can't help it, you talk so funny. We don't mean anything." "Well," said Horace, quite restored to good humor, and speaking with some dignity, "you may laugh at me one kind of a way, but if you mean _humph_ when you laugh, I won't stand it." "_Woon't_ stand it!" echoed Peter Grant; "ain't that Dutch?" "Dutch?" replied Horace: "I'll show you what _Dyche_ is! We have a _Dyche_ teacher come in our school every day, and he stamps his foot and tears round! 'Sei ruhig,' he says: that means, 'hush your mouth and keep still.'" "Is he a Jew, and does he stay in a synagogue?" "No, he is a German _Luteran_, or a Dutch _Deformed_, or something that way." "What do you learn in?" said Johnny Bell. "Why, in little German Readers: what else would they be?" "Does it read like stories and verses?" "I don't know. He keeps hitting the books with a little switch, and screamin' out as if the house was afire." "Come, say over some Dutch; _woon't_ you, Horace?" So the little boy repeated some German poetry, while his schoolmates looked up at him in wonder and admiration. This was just what Horace enjoyed; and he continued, with sparkling eyes,-- "I s'pose you can't any of you _count_ Dutch?" The boys confessed that they could not. "It's just as easy," said Horace, telling over the numbers up to twenty, as fast as he could speak. "You can't any of you _write_ Dutch; can you? You give me a slate now, and I'll write it all over so you couldn't read a word of it." "Ain't it very hard to make?" asked the boys in tones of respectful astonishment. "I reckon you'd think 'twas hard, it's so full of little quirls, but _I_ can write it as easy as English." This was quite true, for Horace made very hard work of any kind of writing. It was not two days before he was at the head of that part of the school known as "the small boys," both in study and play; yet everybody liked him, for, as I have said before, the little fellow had such a strong sense of justice, and such kindness of heart, that he was always a favorite, in spite of his faults. The boys all said there was nothing "mean" about Horace. He would neither abuse a smaller child, nor see one abused. If he thought a boy was doing wrong, he was not afraid to tell him so, and you may be sure he was all the more respected for his moral courage. Horace talked to his schoolmates a great deal about his father, Captain Clifford, who was going to be a general some day. "When I was home," said he, "I studied pa's book of _tictacs_, and I used to drill the boys." There was a loud cry of "Why can't you drill us? Come, let's us have a company, and you be cap'n!"