Page 28 - An Australian Lassie

CHAPTER VII

"CAREW-BROWN"

Tt must be confessed that John Brown--or to be polite and up-to-date--John Carew-Brown surveyed the pupils
of Wygate School with a fighting eye, which is to say, he considered them carefully with regarded to their
pugilistic abilities, and he decided very soon that he "could make them all sing small."

Even upon that first day when he, a new boy, had been standing in view of the whole school, his mind had
chiefly been occupied in running over the boys' obvious fighting qualities--tall, short, fat, thin, all sorts and
conditions of them were there.

The girls he had passed by with but slight notice; to him they were absolutely valueless and uninteresting.
Betty Bruce had certainly caught his attention by her public punishment, and he had been taken aback by that
sharp little pinch of hers. Hitherto he had had nothing to do with girls but he supposed immediately that that
was their manner of fighting, and he did not admire it.

Not many days later an opportunity occurred for him to defend his newly adopted name. Truth to tell, he had
been longing for such an occasion from the day on which old Captain Carew had asked him to fight for his
name too.

He was in the playground, round by the school house, just where the babies' end of the school room joined the
cloak room, and school was over for the day. Having a piece of chalk in one hand, and nothing particular to
do, he occupied a few minutes by writing upon the weather boards of the cloak-room--"J. C. Brown, J. C.
Brown, John C. Brown, John C. Brown," and the hinting C. raised a small dispute in a circle of onlooking
boys and girls.

Tt was Peter Bailey who said, "John Clara Brown," and it was silly little Jack Smith who said "John Codfish
Brown."

A burst of laughter followed, and Peter Bailey and Jack Smith chased each other down the playground, and in
and out among the sapling clump away at the end of it, where some shabby scrub and three gum trees grew.

When they came back, John Brown was still silently writing apparently deaf to all the surmising going on
around him.

Nellie Underwood said it was--"Crabby John Brown," and Arthur Smedley, the school bully, said--"John
Brown the clown."

Whereupon Brown sought out a clean weather-board a shade or so above his head and wrote in bold letters.

"John Carew-Brown, Dene Hall, Willoughby," which made Bailey say--

"Hullo, he's got hold of Bruce's grandfather."

Cyril, who was one of the little circle of jesters, grew pink to the tips of his pretty pink ears, but feeling the
majority and the bully were against Brown, ventured to say--

"He's only running you!"

Nellie Underwood pushed herself into a prominent position in the group and cried--