to her as we go
down.

"I refer you to the school time-table for particulars as to rising,
chapel, preparation, and lights out, and so forth. Discipline on all
these points is essential. Cases of difficulty may be referred to a
session of the other masters, or in extreme cases to me; but please
remember I do not invite consultation in matters of detail. A house-
master may use the cane in special cases, which must be reported through
the masters' session to me. So much for your house duties.

"As Master of the Shell, you preside at morning school there every day,
and, as you know, have to teach classics, English, and divinity. In the
afternoon the boys are taken by the French, mathematical, and chemical
masters. But you are nominally responsible for the whole, and any case
of insubordination or idleness during afternoon school will be reported
to you by the master in charge, and you must deal with it as though you
had been in charge at the time.

"Now come and make Mrs Farthing's acquaintance."

Mrs Farthing, a lean, wrathful-looking personage, stood in the midst of
a wilderness of sheets and blankets, and received her new superior with
a very bad grace. She looked him up and looked him down, and then
sniffed.

"Very good, Mr Railsford; we shall become better acquainted, I've no
doubt."

Railsford shuddered at the prospect; and finding that his luggage was
still knocking about at the porter's lodge, he made further expedition
in search of it, and at last, with superhuman efforts, succeeded in
getting it transferred to his quarters, greatly to the disgust of Mrs
Hastings, who remarked in an audible aside to her fellow-scrubber, Mrs
Willis, that people ought to keep their dirty traps to themselves till
the place is ready for them.

After which Railsford deemed it prudent to take open-air exercise, and
await patiently the hour when his carpets should be laid and Grandcourt
should wake up into life for the new term.

CHAPTER THREE.

OPENING DAY.

The combined labours of Mesdames Farthing, Hastings, Wilson, and their
myrmidons had barely reached a successful climax that afternoon, in the
rescue of order out of the chaos which had reigned in Railsford's house,
when the first contingent of the Grandcourtiers arrived in the great
square. Railsford, who had at last been permitted to take possession of
his rooms and to unstrap his boxes, looked down from his window with
some little curiosity at the scene