osses. There was beak-nosed Thomson
who had gained an Exhibition at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and dark-eyed
Mallock, whose father wrote columnar letters to The Times. Burnaby, who
shocked Michael very much by prophesying that a certain H. G. Wells, now
writing about Martian invasions, was the coming man, and Railton, a
weedy and disconsolate recluse, made up with Michael himself the
class-list.

There was an atmosphere of rest about the History Sixth, a leisured
dignity that contrasted very delightfully with the spectacled industry
of the Upper Fifth. To begin with, Mr, Kirkham was always ten minutes
after every other master in entering his class-room. This habit allowed
the members of his form to stroll gracefully along the corridors and
watch one by one the cavernous doors of other class-rooms absorb their
victims. Michael would often go out of his way to pass Mr. Cray's room,
in order to see with a luxurious sense of relief the intellectual
convicts of the Upper Fifth hurrying to their prison. Many other
conventions of school-life were slackened in the History Sixth. A slight
eccentricity of attire was not considered unbecoming in what was, at any
rate in its own opinion, a faintly literary society. The room was always
open between morning and afternoon school, and it was not an uncommon
sight to see members of the form reading novels in tip-tilted chairs.
Most of the home work was set a week in advance, which did away with the
unpleasant necessity of speculating on the 'construe' or hurriedly
cribbing with a hastily peppered variety of mistakes the composition of
one's neighbour. Much of the work was simple reading, and as for the
essays, by a legal fiction they were always written during the three
hours devoted to Mathematics. Tradition forbade any member of the
History Sixth to take Mathematics seriously, and Mr. Gaskell, the
overworked Mathematical master, was not inclined to break this
tradition. He used to write out a problem or two on the blackboard for
the sake of appearances, and then settle down to the correction of his
more serious pupils' work, while the History Sixth devoted themselves to
their more serious work. One of the great social earthquakes that
occasionally devastate all precedent occurred when Mr. Gaskell was away
with influenza, and his substitute, an earnest young novice, tried to
make Strang and Terry do a Quadratic Equation.

"But, sir, we never do Mathematics."

"Well, what are you her