'Yes,' again replied Winthrop, 'about that young fool Snap.' 'What has he been up to now?' demanded his chum. 'Oh, he has been cheeking Cube-root again. It seems old Cube-root couldn't knock mathematics into him anyhow, so he piled on the impositions. Snap did as many lines as he could, but even with three nibs in your pen at once there is a limit to the number which a fellow can do in a day, and Master Snap has so many of these little literary engagements for other masters as well as old Cube that at last he reached a point beyond which no possible diligence would carry him.' 'Poor old Snap!' laughed Wyndham. 'Then, as he had just got into the eleven,' continued Winthrop, 'he didn't like to give up his half-hour with the professional; the result of all which was that yesterday old Cube asked him for his lines and was told-- '"I haven't done them, sir." '"Haven't done them, sir: what do you mean?" thundered Cube. '"I hadn't time, sir," pleaded Snap. '"Not time! Why, I myself saw you playing cricket to-day for a good half-hour. What do you mean by telling me you had not time?" asked Cube. '"I had not time, sir, because----" Snap tried to say, but Cube stopped him with that abominable trick of his, you know it. '"Yēēs, Hales, yēēs! Yēēs, Hales, yēēs! So you had no time, Hales! Yēēs, Hales, yēēs!" '"No, sir, I was obliged to----" '"To tell me a lie, sir! Yēēs, Hales, yēēs." 'Here Snap's beastly temper gave out, and instead of waiting till he got a chance of telling his story properly to old Cube, who, although he loves mathematics and hates a lie, is a good chap after all, he deliberately mimicked the old chap with-- '"Nōō, sir, nōō! Nōō, sir, nōō!" 'Of course the other fellows went into fits of laughter, and old Cube had fits too, only of another kind, and I expect I shall get "fits" from the Head for trying to get the young idiot off for this match. But I really don't see how we can get on without him,' Winthrop added, as he left his friend at the door, and plodded with a heavy heart up to the head-master's sanctum. What happened there the narrator of this truthful story does not pretend to know. The inside of a headmaster's library was to him a place too sacred for intrusion, and it was only through the foolish persistence of certain unwise under-masters that he was ever induced to enter it. Whenever he did, he left it with a note of recommendation from that excellent man to the school-sergeant. It was not quite a testimonial to character, but still something like it, and always contained an allusion to one of the most graceful of forest trees, the mournful, beautiful birch. I am told that this is the favourite tree of the Russian peasant. I dare say. I am told he is still uneducated. It was education which, I think, taught me to dislike the birch.