CHAPTER X.

NEIGHBORS.

The desk next to Johnny’s had been vacant for a long time, and he did not like this much, for he was a sociable boy, and although of course, no great amount of conversation was permitted during school hours, it is something to be able to make faces to a sympathetic desk-mate. There was not an absolute rule against talking in the school which Johnny attended. The teacher had said, at the beginning of the term,—

“Now, boys, I don’t forbid you to speak to each other during school hours, if you have anything really worth saying on your minds, and will speak so that you will not disturb your neighbors, but all long conversations can be saved till school is out, and I hope you will be honorable enough not to talk foolishly, or to take advantage of this permission. If I find it necessary, I shall resort to a rule, so you have the matter in your own hands.”

It had not been found necessary, so far, although the school was full, excepting that one vacant seat next to Johnny’s.

“It may be a coincidence, you know, Tiny,” said Johnny, one day, when he had been lamenting his lonely lot to his sister, “but I don’t know—I have a kind of a sort of an idea that it isn’t.”

“What is a coincidence, anyhow, Johnny?” inquired Tiny, who was never above asking for information.

“It’s two things happening together, accidentally, that look as if they had been done on purpose,” explained Johnny, with the little air of superior wisdom that he always wore when Tiny asked him a question that he could answer. I am afraid he sometimes hunted up one or two long words, to be worked into his next conversation with Tiny, purely for the purpose of explaining to her! It was so pleasant to see her large eyes raised admiringly to his face.

“But why shouldn’t it be a really and truly coincidence, Johnny?” pursued Tiny.

“Oh well, because Mr. Lennox said one day that he thought Harry Conover and I might be shaken up together, and equally divided, to advantage, and Harry’s the quietest boy I ever knew, so it’s pretty plain what he meant by that. And I’ve noticed how he does with the other boys; he finds out where their weak spots are, and then tries to brace them up there, but while he’s trying, he sort of keeps things out of their way that would be likely to make them slip up, and so I s’pose that is what he is doing to me. But it’s very stupid to be all alone, and I wish another boy would come—then he’d have to use that desk, for it’s the only one that’s left.”

Two or three days after this talk with Tiny, Johnny rushed in from school in a state of great excitement, exclaiming, as he entered the room where his mother and sister were sitting,—

“The seat’s taken, mamma! And it wasn’t a coincidence, Tiny! Mr. Lennox made a little sort of a speech to me, all by myself, after school; he knew this boy was coming, and he saved the seat on purpose for him, and I’m dreadfully afraid he’s a prig! He didn’t act the least bit like a new boy, he just studied and ciphered and wrote as if he’d been going there all his life! And whenever I spoke to him, he just looked at me—so!” and Johnny’s round face assumed an expression of mild and reproachful surprise, which made Tiny laugh, and even made his mother smile, though she shook her head at him at the same time, saying reprovingly,—

“Johnny, Johnny, you know I don’t like you to mimic people, dear!”

“I beg your pardon, mammy darling!” and Johnny poked his rough head into his mother’s lap, “that sort of went off of itself! But indeed, I didn’t talk much to him, and it was about very useful things. He hadn’t any sponge, and I offered him mine, and he was hunting everywhere but in the right place for the Danube river, and I just put my finger on the map, and said, ‘Here it is,’ and he didn’t so much as say ‘thank you!’ And at recess I said, ‘Do you love cookies, Ned?’—his name is Ned Owen—and he said, with a sort of a sniff, ‘I don’t _love_ anything to eat,’ so I thought I’d—I’d see him further before I’d give him one of your cookies, mamma!”

“Now Johnny Leslie,” said his mother, smoothing his hair softly with her nice little cool hands, “you’ve taken a prejudice against that poor boy, and if you don’t stop yourself, you’ll be quarrelling with him before long! Something I read the other day said that, when we find fault with people, and talk against them, there is always envy at the bottom of our dislike. I don’t think it is quite always so, but I do believe it very often is. While you are undressing to-night, I want you to sort yourself out, and put yourself just where you belong.”

Johnny hung his head; he did not have to do a great deal of sorting to find the truth of what his mother had said.

There was a careful completeness about everything the new boy had done, which, to a head-over-heels person, was truly exasperating.

And as days passed on, this feeling grew and strengthened. There was a curious little stiffness and formality about all Ned Owen said and did, which Johnny found very “trying,” and which made him overlook the boy’s really pleasant side; for he had a pleasant side, as every one has, only, unfortunately, we do not always take as much pains to find it as we do to find the unpleasant one.

It seemed to most of the boys that Ned did not mind the fun which was certainly “poked” at him in abundance, but Johnny was very sure that he