it was is in your favour; and I
am inclined on reflection to overlook the affair, if you can assure me
that you were no party to their being put there?"

"On the contrary," said Paul, "I gave the strictest orders that there
was to be no such useless extravagance. I objected to have the kitchen
and housekeeper's room ransacked to make a set of rascally boys ill for
a fortnight at my expense!"

The Doctor stared slightly at this creditable but unnatural view of the
subject. However, as he could not quarrel with the sentiment, he let the
manner of expressing it pass unrebuked for the present, and, after
sentencing Coggs to two days' detention and the copying of innumerable
French verbs, he sent the ill-matched pair down to the schoolroom to
join their respective classes.

Paul went resignedly downstairs and into the room, where he found Mr.
Blinkhorn at the head of one of the long tables, taking a class of about
a dozen boys.

"Take your Livy and Latin Primer, Bultitude," said Mr. Blinkhorn mildly,
"and sit down."

Mr. Blinkhorn was a tall angular man, with a long neck and slightly
drooping head. He had thin wiry brown hair, and a plain face, with
shortsighted kind brown eyes. In character he was mild and reserved,
too conscientious to allow himself the luxury of either favourites or
aversions among the boys, all of whom in his secret soul he probably
disliked about equally, though he neither said nor did anything to show
it.

Paul took a book--any book, for he did not know or care to know one from
another--and sat down at the end furthest from the master, inwardly
rebelling at having education thus forced upon him at his advanced
years, but seeing no escape.

"At dinner time," he resolved desperately, "I will insist on speaking
out, but just now it is simply prudent to humour them."

The rest of the class drew away from him with marked coldness and
occasionally saluted him (when Mr. Blinkhorn's attention was called
away) with terms and grimaces which Paul, although he failed thoroughly
to understand them, felt instinctively were not intended as compliments.

Mr. Blinkhorn's notions of discipline were qualified by a sportsmanlike
instinct which forbade him to harass a boy already in trouble, as he
understood young Bultitude had been, and so he forbore from pressing him
to take any share in the class work.

Mr. Bultitude therefore was saved from any necessity of betraying his
total ignorance of his author, and