I remember an old yeoman, a playfellow of our father’s, who lived in a grey gabled house of his own at the end of the village in those days, and with whom we used to spend a good deal of our spare time, saying to a lady, about her sons, “Bring ’em up sarcy (saucy), Marm! I likes to see bwoys brought up sarcy.” I have no doubt that he, and others, used to cultivate my natural gift of sauciness, and lead me on to give flippant answers, and talk nonsense. In fact, I can quite remember occasions of the kind, and George’s quiet steady look at them, as he thought, no doubt, “What a fool my brother is making of himself, and what a shame of you to encourage him!” Apart altogether from his shyness, he had too much self-command and courtesy himself to run into any danger of this kind. Now, the moment we got to school, my sauciness abated very rapidly on the one hand, and, on the other, I became much more consciously beholden to him. We had scarcely been there a week when the first crisis occurred which made us both aware of this fact. My form had a lesson in early Greek History to get up, in which a part of the information communicated was, that Cadmus was the first man who “carried letters from Asia to Greece.” When we came to be examined, the master asked us, “What was Cadmus?” This way of putting it puzzled us all for a moment or two, when suddenly the words “carried letters” came into my head, and, remembering the man with the leather bag who used to bring my father’s papers and letters, and our marbles and whipcord, from Farringdon, I shouted, “A postman, Sir.” The master looked very angry for a moment, but, seeing my perfect good faith, and that I had jumped up expecting to go to the head of the form, he burst out laughing. Of course all the boys joined in, and when school was over I was christened Cadmus. That I probably should not have minded, but it soon shortened into “Cad,” at which all the blood in my eight-year-old veins was on fire. The more angry I was, the more some of the boys persecuted me with the hateful name; especially one stupid big fellow of twelve or so, who ought to have been two forms higher, and revenged himself for his place amongst us little ones by making our small lives as miserable as he could. A day or two after, with two or three boys for audience, he had got me in a corner of the playground, into which he kept thrusting me violently back, calling me “Cad, Cad,” while I was ready to fly at his throat and kill him. Suddenly we heard a step tearing down the gravel walk, and George, in his shirt sleeves, fresh from a game of rounders, rushed into the circle, and sent my tyrant staggering back with a blow in the chest, and then faced him with clenched fists, and a blaze in his eye, which I never saw there more than two or three times. I don’t think many boys, or men, would have liked to face him when it was there. At any rate my persecutor didn’t, though he must have been a stone heavier, and much stronger.