Van Rheyn, too, was next door to helpless. He did not climb, or leap, or even run. Had not been used to it, he said. What _had_ he been used to do, then, he was asked one day. Oh, he had sat out in the garden with his mother; and since her death, with Aunt Claribelle, and gone for an airing in the carriage three times a week. Was he a girl? roared the boys. Did he do patchwork? Not now; he had left off sewing when he was nine, answered Van Rheyn innocently, unconscious of the storm of mockery the avowal would invoke. "Pray, were you born a young lady?--or did they change you at nurse?" shouted Jessup, who would have kept the ball rolling till midnight. "I say, you fellows, he has come to the wrong school: we don't take in girls, do we? Let me introduce this one to you, boys--'Miss Charlotte.'" And, so poor Charley Van Rheyn got that nickname as well as the other. Miss Charlotte! Latin was a stumbling-block. Van Rheyn had learnt it according to French rules and French pronunciation, and he could not readily get into our English mode. "It was bad enough to have to teach a stupid boy Latin," grumbled the under Latin master (under Dr. Frost), "but worse to have to _un_-teach him." Van Rheyn was not stupid, however; if he seemed so, it was because his new life was so strange to him. One day the boys dared him to a game at leap-frog. Some of them were at it in the yard, and Van Rheyn stood by, looking on. "Why don't you go in for it?" suddenly asked Parker, giving him a push. "There is to be a round or two at boxing this evening, why don't you go in for _that_?" "They never would let me do these rough things," replied Van Rheyn, who invariably answered all the chaffing questions civilly and patiently. "Who wouldn't? Who's 'they'?" "My mother and my Aunt Claribelle. Also, when I was starting to come here, my father said I was not to exert myself." "All right, Miss Charlotte; but why on earth didn't the respectable old gentleman send you over in petticoats? Never was such a thing heard of, you know, as for a girl to wear a coat and pantaloons. It's not decent, Miss Charlotte; it's not modest." "Why do you say all this to me for ever? I am not a girl," said poor Van Rheyn. "No? Don't tell fibs. If you were not a girl you'd go in for our games. Come! Try this. Leap-frog's especially edifying, I assure you: expands the mind. _Won't_ you try it?" Well, the upshot was, that they dared him to try it. A dozen, or so, set on at him like so many wolves. What with that, and what with their stinging ridicule, poor Van Rheyn was goaded out of his obedience to home orders, and did try it. After a few tumbles, he went over very tolerably, and did not dislike it at all. "If I can only learn to do as the rest of you do, perhaps they will let me alone," he said to me that same night, a sort of eagerness in his bright grey eyes.