oduced Michael to the Shell, Mr. Neech was sitting
in his chair with his feet on the desk and a bandana handkerchief over
his face, apparently fast asleep. The inmates of the Shell were sitting,
vigorously learning something that seemed to cause them great hardship;
for every face was puzzled and from time to time sighs floated upon the
class-room air.

Mr. Spivey coughed nervously to attract Mr. Neech's attention, and when
Mr. Neech took no notice, he tapped nervously on the desk with Mr.
Neech's ruler. Somewhere in the back row of desks a titter of mirth was
faintly audible. Mr. Neech was presumably aroused with great suddenness
by Mr. Spivey's tapping and swung his legs off the desk and, sitting
bolt upright in his chair, glared at the intruders.

"Oh, the Headmaster has sent Fane from the Special," Mr. Spivey
nervously explained.

Mr. Neech threw his eyes up to the ceiling and looked as if Michael's
arrival were indeed the last straw.

"Twenty-six miserable boys are already having a detestable and
stultifying education in this wretched class," lamented Mr. Neech. "And
now comes a twenty-seventh. Very well. Very well. I'll stuff him with
the abominable jargon and filthy humbug. I'll cram him with the
undigested balderdash. Oh, you unhappy boy," Mr. Neech went on, directly
addressing Michael. "You unfortunate imp and atom. Sit down, if you can
find a desk. Sit down and fill your mind with the ditchwater I'm paid to
teach you."

Mr. Spivey had by this time reached the door and with a nervous nod he
abruptly vanished.

"Now then everybody," said Mr. Neech, closing his lips very tightly in a
moment's pause and then breaking forth loudly. "You have had one quarter
of an hour to learn the repetition you should all have learned last
night. Begin, that mooncalf with a dirty collar, the boy Wilberforce,
and if any stupid stoat or stockfish boggles over one word, I'll flay
him. Begin! The boy Fane can sit still. The others stand up!" shouted
Mr. Neech. "Now the boy Wilberforce!

_Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi_---- Go on, you bladder of
idiocy."

Michael watched the boy Wilberforce concentrate all his faculties upon
not making a single mistake, and hoped that he would satisfy this
alarming master. While Wilberforce spoke the lines of the Eclogue,
panting between each hexameter, Mr. Neech strode up and down the room
with his arms crossed behind him, wagging the tail of his gown.
Sometimes he would strike