e. Or he might offer to put me up at the school. If he
does, I think I shall very possibly accept. It might be better."

And he leant back in his seat in a much easier frame of mind; it was
annoying, of course, to have been turned out of his warm dining-room,
and sent all the way down to Market Rodwell on a fool's errand like
this; but still, if nothing worse came of it, he could put up with the
temporary inconvenience, and it was a great relief to be spared the
necessity of an explanation.

The other boys watched him furtively with growing admiration, which
expressed itself in subdued whispers, varied by little gurgles and
"squirks" of laughter; they tried to catch his eye and stimulate him to
further feats of audacity, but Mr. Bultitude, of course, repulsed all
such overtures with a coldness and severity which at once baffled and
piqued them.

At last his eccentricity took a shape which considerably lessened their
enthusiasm. Kiffin, the new boy, occupied the seat next to Paul; he was
a nervous-looking little fellow, with a pale face and big pathetic brown
eyes like a seal's, and his dress bore plain evidence of a mother's
careful supervision, having all the uncreased trimness and specklessness
rarely to be observed except in the toilettes of the waxen prodigies in
a shop-window.

It happened that, as he lay back in the padded seat between the
sheltering partitions, watching the sickly yellow dregs of oil surging
dismally to and fro with the motion in the lamp overhead, or the black
indistinct forms flitting past through the misty blue outside, the
pathos of his situation became all at once too much for him.

He was a home-bred boy, without any of that taste for the companionship
and pursuits of his fellows, or capacity for adapting himself to their
prejudices and requirements, which give some home-bred boys a ready
passport into the roughest communities.

His heart throbbed with no excited curiosity, no conscious pride, at
this his first important step in life; he was a forlorn little stranger,
in an unsympathetic strange land, and was only too well aware of his
position.

So that it is not surprising that as he thought of the home he had left
an hour or two ago which now seemed so shadowy, so inaccessible and
remote, his eyes began to smart and sting, and his chest to heave
ominously, until he felt it necessary to do something to give a partial
vent to his emotions and prevent a public and disgraceful exhibi