"Hallo, Tip!" Howard Minturn had said to him at recess; "let's shake hands. Welcome to history; it's awfully hard and interesting." And Tip did shake hands, and laughed; and looked over at the other clique--the dunces--with a half-patronizing nod to Bob Turner; and wondered how he _could_, have borne it to have been numbered with them that day; then he felt that he was climbing into the first set, and climbing _fast_. In spelling, too, he came off conqueror; spelled down the class, spelled until Mr. Burrows closed his book with the words, "I presume you are tired of this, gentlemen, and, as our examinations are confined to the lessons, I think it will hardly pay to go further, for Edward has not missed since the second week in the term." So again, flushed and excited, Tip went to his seat victorious. Only arithmetic now, and he would be through with the working part of the day. It was the last recitation in the morning, and he was so eager and anxious to do well, that he began to grow nervous. The class was called at last. They had gone slowly and carefully through long division, and would be ready for fractions next term. The recitation passed off finely. Tip had not studied day and night during the winter for nothing. He was at the board, working an example in long division; it was almost finished. The hand of the clock pointed to ten minutes of twelve. In ten minutes he would be through, and his name would stand on that honoured list, among those who had not missed one word or made one mistake during the examination. His hand began to tremble. What was the matter with that example? Oh, what _was_ the matter? The remainder was too large; no--it was too small; no--it was--he didn't know what! Everybody was watching him; he heard a boy laugh softly. He had made a mistake, then; what was it? where was it? Mr. Burrows' voice came to him, calm and kind: "Edward, don't get excited. Look at your remainder closely; take the first figures of divisor and remainder--nine in thirty-one, how many times? That will help you." Ellis Holbrook stood but a step from the blackboard, just behind him. Tip heard his low whisper, "Seven," and, without waiting to think,--indeed, he was too nervous to think,--he caught at the number. "Seven times!" he said hurriedly. Then he heard bursts of laughter from the boys, and dashed down his chalk in an agony of shame and pain. And the clock struck twelve! The honour was lost. The boys gathered around him after school was closed. "It was too bad, Tip," Howard Minturn said, in a tone of honest sympathy. "You'd have had it in a minute more." "I'd have had it if it had not been for Ellis Holbrook, and he's a mean scamp!" Tip answered, in a rage. "Whew!" said Will Bailey; "what did Ellis do?" and Ellis turned, and proudly confronted the angry boy. "He told me wrong just on purpose; that's what he did, and he knows it." And Tip broke away from them, and dashed out of the room.