bent--your liquorice water not to leak out of your bottle over the
cobbler's wax, your bull's-eyes not to ram up the lock and barrel of
your pistol, and so forth.

In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I bought one of those
pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and who was in my
form. Is he dead? Is he a millionnaire? Is he a bankrupt now? He was an
immense screw at school, and I believe to this day that the value of the
thing for which I owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in
reality not one-and-nine.

I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused myself
with twiddling round the movable calendar. But this pleasure wore off.
The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and violent
boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor. His constant remark was,
"When are you going to pay me that three-and-sixpence? What sneaks your
relations must be? They come to see you. You go out to them on Saturdays
and Sundays, and they never give you anything! Don't tell ME, you little
humbug!" and so forth. The truth is that my relations were respectable;
but my parents were making a tour in Scotland; and my friends in London,
whom I used to go and see, were most kind to me, certainly, but somehow
never tipped me. That term, of May to August, 1823, passed in agonies
then, in consequence of my debt to Hawker. What was the pleasure of a
calendar pencil-case in comparison with the doubt and torture of mind
occasioned by the sense of the debt, and the constant reproach of that
fellow's scowling eyes and gloomy, coarse reminders? How was I to pay
off such a debt out of sixpence a week? ludicrous! Why did not some
one come to see me, and tip me? Ah! my dear sir, if you have any little
friends at school, go and see them, and do the natural thing by them.
You won't miss the sovereign. You don't know what a blessing it will be