riend and rival Oliver
Greenfield, who is standing there against the wall, with his head
resting on a map of Greece, is also in for it. Greenfield does not
strike one as nearly so brilliant a fellow as his friend. He is quieter
and more lazy, and more solemn. Some say he has a temper, and others
that he is selfish; and generally he is not the most popular boy in
Saint Dominic's. Wraysford, however, sticks to him through thick and
thin, and declares that, so far from being ill-tempered and selfish, he
is one of the best fellows in the school, and one of the cleverest. And
Mr Wraysford is prepared to maintain his allegation at the point of
the--knuckle! That hulking, ugly youth is Braddy, the bully, the terror
of the Guinea-pigs, and the laughing-stock of his own class-mates. The
boy who is fastening a chalk duster on to the collar of Braddy's coat is
Tom Senior, the Doctor's eldest son, who, one would have imagined, might
have learned better manners. Last, not least (for we need not
re-introduce Messrs. Ricketts or Bullinger, or go out of our way to
present Simon, the donkey of the Form, to the reader), is Master Anthony
Pembury, the boy now mounting up onto a chair with the aid of two
friends. Anthony is lame, and one of the most dreaded boys in Saint
Dominic's. His father is editor of the _Great Britain_, and the son
seems to have inherited his talent for saying sharp things. Woe betide
the Dominican who raises Tony's dander! He cannot box, he cannot
pursue; but he can _talk_, and he can ridicule, as his victims all the
school over know.

He it is who has, of his own sweet will, summoned together the present
meeting, and the business he is now about to explain.

"The fact is, you fellows," he begins, "I wanted to ask your opinion
about a little idea of my own. You know the _Sixth Form Magazine_?"

"Rather," says Ricketts; "awful rubbish too! Papers a mile long in it
about Greek roots; and poetry about the death of Seneca, and all that
sort of thing."

"That's just it," continued Pembury; "it's rubbish, and unreadable; and
though they condescend to let us see it, I don't suppose two fellows in
the Form ever wade through it."

"I know _I don't_, for one," says Wraysford, laughing; "I _did_ make a
start at that ode on the birth of Senior junior in the last, which began
with--

"`Hark, 'tis the wail of an infant that wakes the still echoes of
lofty Olympus,'

"but I got no farther."

"Yes," say