"That shows you are a Londoner. You will learn all those things here. If you look for hares in our walks, you may chance to see one; or you may start a pheasant; but take care you don't mention lambs, or goslings, or cowslips, or any spring things; or you will never hear the last of it." "Thank you: but what will poor Holt do? He is from India, and he knows very little about our ways." "They may laugh at him; but they will not despise him as they might a Londoner. Being an Indian, and being a Londoner, are very different things." "And yet how proud the Londoners are over the country! It is very odd." "People are proud of their own ways all the world over. You will be proud of being a Crofton boy, by-and-by." "Perhaps I am now, a little," said Hugh, blushing. "What, already? Ah! You will do, I see. I have known old people proud of their age, and young people of their youth. I have seen poor people proud of their poverty; and everybody has seen rich people proud of their wealth. I have seen happy people proud of their prosperity, and the afflicted proud of their afflictions. Yes; people can always manage to be proud: so you have boasted of being a Londoner up to this time; and from this time you will hold your head high as a Crofton boy." "How long? Till when?" "Ah! Till when? What next! What do you mean to be afterwards?" "A soldier, or a sailor, or a great traveller, or something of that kind. I mean to go quite round the world, like Captain Cook." "Then you will come home, proud of having been round the world; and you will meet with some old neighbour who boasts of having spent all his life in the house he was born in." "Old Mr Dixon told mother that of himself, very lately. Oh dear, how often does the postman come?" "You want a letter from home, do you? But you left them only yesterday morning." "I don't know how to believe that,--it seems such an immense time! But when does the postman come?" "Any day when he has letters to bring,--at about four in the afternoon. We see him come, from the school-room; but we do not know who the letters are for till school breaks up at five." "O dear!" cried Hugh, thinking what the suspense must be, and the disappointment at last to twenty boys, perhaps, for one that was gratified. Firth advised him to write a letter home before he began to expect one. If he did not like to ask the usher, he himself would rule the paper for him, and he could write a bit at a time, after his lessons were done in the evening, till the sheet was full.