had won by his activity and strength.

It was a Sunday afternoon, towards the end of the summer term, and the
boys were sauntering about in the green playground, or lying on the
banks reading and chatting. Eric was with a little knot of his chief
friends, enjoying the sea breeze as they sat on the grass. At last the
bell of the school chapel began to ring, and they went in to the
afternoon service. Eric usually sat with Duncan and Llewellyn,
immediately behind the benches allotted to chance visitors. The bench in
front of them happened on this afternoon to be occupied by some rather
odd people, viz., an old man with long white hair, and two ladies
remarkably stout, who were dressed with much juvenility, although past
middle age. Their appearance immediately attracted notice, and no sooner
had they taken their seats than Duncan and Llewellyn began to titter.
The ladies' bonnets, which were of white, trimmed with long green leaves
and flowers, just peered over the top of the boys' pew, and excited much
amusement. But Eric had not yet learnt to disregard the solemnity of the
place, and the sacred act in which they were engaged. He tried to look
away, and attend to the service, and for a time he partially succeeded,
although, seated as he was between the two triflers, who were
perpetually telegraphing to each other their jokes, he found it a
difficult task, and secretly he began to be much tickled.

At last the sermon commenced, and Llewellyn, who had imprisoned a
grasshopper in a paper cage, suddenly let it hop out. The first hop took
it to the top of the pew; the second perched it on the shoulder of the
stoutest lady. Duncan and Llewellyn tittered louder, and even Eric could
not resist a smile. But when the lady, feeling some irritation on her
shoulder, raised her hand, and the grasshopper took a frightened leap
into the centre of the green foliage which enwreathed her bonnet, none