"If you please, Mr. Mustard," I called out, "it was me that sold Tommy's father that pair of boots this morning in my father's shop, so Tommy couldn't have broken your flowerpots last night, with these boots on his feet!" "Eh, what!" cried the master, turning upon me; "well, Tommy is excused. But the rest----" The others provided with our sixes were, to wit, Frederick Allen, Widow Allen's boy; Bob Grey, Eben Pringle, and Dorky Cobb--all poor boys. But before punishment began I put my own before the master's eyes. _They were number sixes_. "If you punish Fred and Bob and Eben and Dorky, you must whip me, too, Mr. Mustard," I said. "And I shall have to tell my father, and he won't like it, because nobody will come any more to our shop to buy boots, if they are to be punished for it at school!" I always called him Mr. Mustard, because I was the only boy in the school who dared do it, and I knew he hated it. But, you see, he was afraid of my father. Most people in Breckonside were afraid of my father. So I got them off at that time; but presently the master welted Bob Grey for making a noise, though he knew perfectly well it was I who had done it. And the lesson was not over before he had got even with the lot of them--Fred and Eben and Dorky and all--except me, of course. I was always first on my bench; and that was the highest in the school. You see, I wore the best coat, and Mr. Mustard got all his provisions, his stationery, his coals, his bacon from my father's shop; and he was supposed to settle his account once a year. He gave my father a little honey in exchange, when it was the time to draw the sections off from the hives, but he never paid very much money. So I could stay away from school when I liked, and so long as my father did not find out, no harm ever came. Mr. Mustard never asked a question. He took it for granted that I had been sent somewhere to look after some of my father's little businesses. The boys knew this, and used to get me to take them into school if they were late or had been "kipping"--girls, too, sometimes; though they did not play truant regularly, as we did. It was a good thing in Breckonside to be my father's son. Just after Scripture reading and catechism, if the vicar did not come to examine us--which was not often--we had half an hour's play, while the "Dissenters" had multiplication table and Troy weight, to keep them aware of themselves. So, while Mr. Mustard was rubbing his spectacles and telling us not to be longer away than half an hour, I took out my quill gun and cut a smart pellet with the end of it out of a slice of potato. Then I cut another with the opposite muzzle, and with my pretty, tiny ramrod I shot it under the desk. It took the end of Mr. Mustard's nose neatly, making a red bull's-eye, for which Freddy Allen was promptly whipped, because his mother was a widow and had no influence with the School Committee.