"Jump it out!" "One inch more!" mingled sometimes with
"False quantity!" "Speak up, prompter!"--how, after the speechifying
was done, the examiners rose and made their reports, which nobody
listened to and everyone voted a bore.

How, next, Dr Ponsford rose with a rustle of his silk gown, which was
heard all over the hall in the dead silence, and proceeded to tell the
Earl of Somebody and the other distinguished guests what everybody knew,
namely, that the school had now come to the end of another year's work,
and etcetera, etcetera. But how, when he took up his list, and the
tables containing the prizes were wheeled forward and uncovered,
attention once more awoke, the boys on the prize benches settled their
cravats, and felt if their hair-partings were all right, and then sat
back in their places with a delightful simulation of indifference--

The reader knows all about it; he has been through it. He knows the
cheers which hailed the announcement that Smedley was going up to Oxford
with a Balliol scholarship in his pocket, and that Ainger had won one of
the minor scholarships at George's. He does not need to be told of the
shouts which greeted the appearance of boy after boy from Railsford's
house on the platform steps to receive his prize; or of the grim smile
on the doctor's face as a youthful voice from the prize benches,
forgetting the solemnity of the occasion, shouted, "Marky again, bravo
us!" Nor when presently Arthur Herapath was called up to receive a
piece of paper informing him that he was the winner of half the Swift
Exhibition, or when, close behind, Digby Oakshott--the doctor
scurrilously omitted his full title--trotted up to accept the Shell
History prize--can anyone who has been in such a scene before fail to
imagine the cheers and laughter and chaff which the public appearance of
these two notorious characters evoked?

So the ceremony went on--and the reader, I think, can bear me out when I
say that, after an hour of it, I distinctly saw--for I was there, near
the front--several ladies yawn behind their fans, and otherwise show
signs of fatigue, so that when the poor little Babies, who had done as
honest work as anybody, toddled up to get their little prizes, scarcely
anybody looked at them, and were glad when they were polished off.
Which I thought a shame; and resolved, whenever I am head-master of a
public school, I shall turn my prize list upside down and call the
Babies up first.

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