uietly. I cannot sit in a thorough draught!"

Dick obeyed, and applied himself to the dessert with rather an injured
expression.

His father felt a greater sense of constraint and worry than ever; the
interview, as he had feared, seemed likely to last some time, and he
felt that he ought to improve the occasion in some way, or, at all
events, make some observation. But, for all that, he had not the
remotest idea what to say to this red-haired, solemn boy, who sat
staring gloomily at him in the intervals of filling his mouth. The
situation grew more embarrassing every moment.

At last, as he felt himself likely to have more to say in reproof than
on any other subject, he began with that.

"There's one thing I want to talk to you about before you go," he began,
"and that's this. I had a most unsatisfactory report of you this last
term; don't let me have that again. Dr. Grimstone tells me--ah, I have
his letter here--yes, he says (and just attend, instead of making
yourself ill with preserved ginger)--he says, 'Your son has great
natural capacity, and excellent abilities; but I regret to say that,
instead of applying himself as he might do, he misuses his advantages,
and succeeds in setting a mischievous example to--if not actually
misleading--his companions.' That's a pleasant account for a father to
read! Here am I, sending you to an expensive school, furnishing you with
great natural capacity and excellent abilities, and--and--every other
school requisite, and all you do is to misuse them! It's disgraceful!
And misleading your companions, too! Why, at your age, they ought to
mislead _you_--No, I don't mean that--but what I may tell you is that
I've written a very strong letter to Dr. Grimstone, saying what pain it
gave me to hear you misbehaved yourself, and telling him, if he ever
caught you setting an example of any sort, mind that, _any_ sort, in the
future--he was to, ah, to remember some of Solomon's very sensible
remarks on the subject. So I should strongly advise you to take care
what you're about in future, for your own sake!"

This was not a very encouraging address, perhaps, but it did not seem to
distress Dick to any extent; he had heard very much the same sort of
thing several times before, and had been fully prepared for it then.

He had been seeking distraction in almonds and raisins, but now they
only choked instead of consoling him, and he gave them up and sat
brooding silently over his hard lot in