There were five of us who, from various reasons, were to pass the holidays at school. First, Jack and Willy Somers. These two brothers generally spent their holidays at the house of an aunt, but she was ill, and could not receive them this time. Jack was certainly the very worst boy to be near a sick bed, always chattering, and shouting, and racketing about. Unless his aunt was a very different person from most single ladies I have known, I can’t understand how she ever managed to put up with him; indeed, I believe they had frequent squabbles, in consequence of a propensity of Jack’s for climbing on the outside of the staircase, and a habit he had of tying a tin kettle to the tail of her favourite cat, and other amusements, which the good lady did not at all approve of. Willy was a small boy, about nine years old, and all I can remember of him is that he had curly hair, great red cheeks, and a funny little lump in the place where other people have noses. Then there was Arthur Howard, a quiet, gentle boy, who had neither father nor mother, nor aunt to go to, and spent all his holidays at the school, poor fellow. And the last was Edwin Saunders, whose parents were in India, where he gave us to understand that he was soon to follow them, and reside in a palace surrounded with palm-trees, with about a dozen white elephants, and rather more than a hundred native servants at his disposal. This picture of oriental luxury rather dazzled us, and we looked to Saunders as a person of consequence, but I have since had reason to believe that he was exaggerating his expectations, inasmuch as I afterwards found him residing in a small house in a country town with his father, who had retired from the army on half pay. Being left alone, then, in the great school-house, which seemed so strangely silent and empty, we five resolved to make the best of it. And we got on pretty well after all. We had no lessons to learn, and almost nobody to look after us, and could roam about all day where we liked. So we chattered, and played, and read story books out of the school library, and enjoyed our freedom. If it had only come on hard frost, we wouldn’t have minded staying at school a bit, for there was a splendid pond for skating just at the back of Upton House. On the third day we were all sitting round the fire in the school-room, after dinner, when Willy Somers, who had been meditating deeply, uttered the following remarkable piece of information:— “To-morrow’s Christmas Day.” “Well, we all know that,” said his brother. “Can’t you think of something new and original to tell us, Willy?” “I was thinking—I was wondering if Lickemwell would give us a plum pudding.” “Catch him,” said Saunders, who was of a cynical disposition, and had no great faith in human nature. “He’ll have one himself, but we’ll get nothing better than that everlasting stick jaw. If I was in India, what a splendid pudding I should have!”