When my meal was over, and my stomach and my pockets all full, Aunt Gainor
bade me sit on her knees, and began to tell me about what fine gentlemen
were the Wynnes, and how foolish my grandfather had been to turn Quaker and
give up fox-hunting and the old place. I was told, too, how much she had
lost to Mr. Penn last night, and more that was neither well for me to hear
nor wise for her to tell; but as to this she cared little, and she sent me
away then, as far too many times afterward, full of my own importance, and
of desire to escape some day from the threatened life of the ledger and the
day-book.

At last she said, "You are getting too heavy, Hugh. Handsome Mrs. Ferguson
says you are too big to be kissed, and not old enough to kiss," and so she
bade me go forth to the afternoon session of the academy.

After two weeks at the academy I got my first lesson in the futility of
non-resistance, so that all the lessons of my life in favour of this
doctrine were, of a sudden, rendered vain. We were going home in the
afternoon, gay and happy, Jack Warder to take supper with me, and to use a
boat my aunt had given me.

Near to High street was a vacant lot full of bushes and briers. Here the
elder lads paused, and one said, "Wynne, you are to fight."

I replied, "Why should I fight? I win not."

"But it is to get your standing in the school, and Tom Alloway is to fight
you."

"This was a famous occasion in our lives," writes my friend Jack; "for,