"He'll be as good a scholar as Jack yet!" she exclaimed. "But don't
forget, my darling, that my Jem must never 'hit a dog, or a cat, or a
boy.' Now, love, you may put the book away."

Jem stuck out his lips and looked down, and hesitated. He seemed almost
disposed to go on with his lessons. But he changed his mind, and
shutting the book with a bang, he scampered off. As he passed the
ottoman near the door, he saw Kitty, our old tortoise-shell puss, lying
on it, and (moved perhaps by the occurrence of the word _cat_ in the
last sentence of the lesson) he gave her such a whack with the flat side
of _Chick-seed_ that she bounced up into the air like a sky-rocket, Jem
crying out as he did so, "I had my bat, and I hit him as he lay on the
mat."

It was seldom enough that Jem got anything by heart, but he had
certainly learned this; for when an hour later I went to look for him in
the garden, I found him panting with the exertion of having laid my
nice, thick, fresh green crop of mustard and cress flat with the back of
the coal-shovel, which he could barely lift, but with which he was still
battering my salad-bed, chanting triumphantly at every stroke, "I had my
bat, and I hit him as he lay on the mat." He was quite out of breath,
and I had not much difficulty in pummelling him as he deserved.

Which shows how true it is, as my dear mother said, that "you never know
what to do for the best in bringing up boys."

Just about the time that we outgrew _Chick-seed_, and that it was
allowed on all hands that even for quiet country-folk with no learned
notions it was high time we were sent to school, our parents were spared