atin verses as he had been. Was not that
improvement--self-improvement? Then he was conscious of having
distinctly improved in morals. He had once or twice done his Caesar
without a crib, and the aggregate of lines he had had to write for
impositions had been several hundred less than the corresponding term of
last year.

Thus the son gently reasoned with his parent, who replied that what he
would like to see in his boy was an interest in some intellectual
pursuits outside the mere school routine. Why, now, did he not take up
some standard book of history with which to occupy his spare time, or
some great poem like the _Paradise Lost_, of which he might commit a few
lines to memory every day, and so emulate his great-uncle, who used to
be able to repeat the whole poem by heart?

Both Arthur and Dig had landed for the term with hampers more or less
replete with indigestible mementoes of domestic affection. Arthur had a
Madeira cake and a rather fine lobster, besides a small box of figs,
some chocolate creams, Brazil nuts, and (an enforced contribution from
the cook) pudding-raisins.

Dig, whose means were not equal to his connections, produced, somewhat
bashfully, a rather "high" cold chicken, some gingerbread, some pyretic
saline, and a slab or two of home-made toffee. These good things, when
spread out on the table that evening, made quite an imposing array, and
decidedly warmed the cockles of the hearts of their joint owners, and
suggested to them naturally thoughts of hospitality and revelry.

"Let's have a blow-out in the dormitory," proposed Arthur. "Froggy will
let us alone, and we can square Felgate with a hunk of this toffee if he
interferes."

Felgate was the prefect charged with the oversight of the Shell
dormitory in Railsford's--a duty he discharged by never setting foot
inside their door when he could possibly get out of it.

From a gastronomic point of view the boys would doubtless have done
better to postpone their feast till to-morrow. They had munched
promiscuously all day--during the railway journey especially--and almost
needed a night's repose to enable them to attack the formidable banquet
now proposed on equal terms. But hospitality brooks no delays.
Besides, Dig's chicken was already a little over ripe, and it was
impossible to say how Arthur's lobster might endure the night.

So the hearts of Maple, Tilbury, Dimsdale, and Simson were made glad
that evening by an intimation that i