to suggestions from
headquarters which were not intended to be disregarded.

This, though undoubtedly well meant, did not serve to stimulate their
affection for the game, an excellent one in moderation, but one which,
if played "by special desire" two or three hours a day for weeks in
succession is apt to lose its freshness and pall upon the youthful mind.

It was a bright morning. There had been a hard frost during the night,
and the ground was hard, sparkling with rime and ringing to the foot.
The air was keen and invigorating, and the bare black branches of the
trees were outlined clear and sharp against the pale pure blue of the
morning sky.

Just the weather for a long day's skating over the dark green glassy
ice, or a bracing tramp on country roads into cheery red-roofed market
towns. But now it had lost all power to charm. It was almost depressing
by the contrast between the boundless liberty suggested, and the dull
reality of a round of uninteresting work which was all it heralded.

So they lounged listlessly about, gravitating finally towards the end of
the playground, where a deep furrow marked the line of the base. There
was no attempt to play. They stood gossiping in knots, grumbling and
stamping their feet to keep warm. By-and-by the day-boarders began to
drop in one by one, several of them, from a want of tact in adapting
themselves to the general tone, earning decided unpopularity at once by
a cheerful briskness and an undisguised satisfaction at having something
definite to do once more.

If Mr. Tinkler, who had joined one of the groups, had not particularly
distinguished himself at breakfast, he made ample amends now, and by the
grandeur and manliness of his conversation succeeded in producing a
decided impression upon some of the smaller boys.

"The bore of a place like this, you know," he was saying with
magnificent disdain, "is that a fellow can't have his pipe of a morning.
I've been used to it, and so, of course, I miss it. If I chose to insist
on it Grimstone couldn't say anything; but with a lot of young fellows
like you, you see, it wouldn't look well!"

It could hardly have looked worse than little Mr. Tinkler himself would
have done, if he had ventured upon more than the mildest of cigarettes,
for he was a poor but pertinacious smoker, and his love for the weed was
chastened by wholesome fear. There, however, he was in no danger of
betraying this, and indeed it would have been injudicio