inton.

'And let all the other asses see you lookin' like this! Not much. We'll
all come up to Number Five Study and wash off in hot water. Beetle, you
aren't damaged. Go along and light the gas-stove.'

'There's a tin of cocoa in my study somewhere,' Perowne shouted after
him. 'Rootle round till you find it, and take it up.'

Separately, by different roads, Vernon's jersey pulled half over his
head, the boys repaired to Number Five Study. Little Hartopp and King, I
am sorry to say, leaned over the banisters of King's landing
and watched.

'Ve-ry human,' said little Hartopp. 'Your virtuous Winton, having got
himself into trouble, takes it out of my poor old Paddy. I wonder what
precise lie Paddy will tell about his face.'

'But surely you aren't going to embarrass him by asking?' said King.

'_Your_ boy won,' said Hartopp.

'To go back to what we were discussing,' said King quickly, 'do you
pretend that your modern system of inculcating unrelated facts about
chlorine, for instance, all of which may be proved fallacies by the time
the boys grow up, can have any real bearing on education--even the low
type of it that examiners expect?'

'I maintain nothing. But is it any worse than your Chinese reiteration
of uncomprehended syllables in a dead tongue?'

'Dead, forsooth!' King fairly danced. 'The only living tongue on earth!
Chinese! On my word, Hartopp!'

'And at the end of seven years--how often have I said it?' Hartopp went
on,--'seven years of two hundred and twenty days of six hours each, your
victims go away with nothing, absolutely nothing, except, perhaps, if
they've been very attentive, a dozen--no, I'll grant you twenty--one
score of totally unrelated Latin tags which any child of twelve could
have absorbed in two terms.'

'But--but can't you realise that if our system brings later--at any
rate--at a pinch--a simple understanding--grammar and Latinity apart--a
mere glimpse of the significance (foul word!) of, we'll say, one Ode of
Horace, one twenty lines of Virgil, we've got what we poor devils of
ushers are striving after?'

'And what might that be?' said Hartopp.

'Balance, proportion, perspective--life. Your scientific man is the
unrelated animal--the beast without background. Haven't you ever
realised _that_ in your atmosphere of stinks?'

'Meantime you make them lose life for the sake of living, eh?'

'Blind again, Hartopp! I told you about Paddy's quotation this morning.
(But he made _pr