hankful to
get away, with his tale untold, on any frivolous pretext that first
suggested itself.

This, of course, brought him into suspicion, for such conduct had the
appearance of a systematic course of practical joking, and even the most
impartial teachers will sometimes form an unfavourable opinion of a
particular boy on rather slender grounds, and then find fresh
confirmation of it in his most insignificant actions.

As for the school generally, his scowls and his sullenness, his
deficiency in the daring and impudence that had warmed their hearts
towards Dick, and, above all, his strange knack of getting them into
trouble--for he seldom received what he considered an indignity without
making a formal complaint--all this brought him as much hearty dislike
and contempt as, perhaps, the most unsympathetic boy ever earned since
boarding-schools were first invented.

The only boy who still seemed to retain a secret tenderness for him, as
the Dick he had once looked up to and admired, was Jolland, who
persisted in believing, and in stating his belief, that this apparent
change of demeanour was a perverted kind of joke on Bultitude's part,
which he would condescend to explain some day when it had gone far
enough, and he wearied and annoyed Paul beyond endurance by perpetually
urging him to abandon his ill-judged experiment and discover the point
of the jest.

But for Jolland's help, which he persevered in giving in spite of the
opposition and unpopularity it brought upon himself, Mr. Bultitude would
have found it impossible to make any pretence of performing the tasks
required of him.

He found himself expected, as a matter of course, to have a certain
familiarity with Greek paradigms and German conversation scraps,
propositions in Euclid and Latin gerunds, of all of which, having had a
strict commercial education in his young days, he had not so much as
heard before his metamorphosis. But by carefully copying Jolland's
exercises, and introducing enough mistakes of his own to supply the
necessary local colour, he was able to escape to a great degree the
discovery of his blank ignorance on all these subjects--an ignorance
which would certainly have been put down as mere idleness and obstinacy.

But it will be readily believed that he lived in constant fear of such
discovery, and as it was, his dependence on a little scamp like his
son's friend was a sore humiliation to one who had naturally supposed
hitherto that a