ar, to begin
turning over the leaves, looking hopelessly at the declensions and
conjugations, with the exceptions and notes.

"What's the matter?" whispered Mercer, who just then returned from Mr
Rebble's end, where he had made one of a class in Euclid.

"Doctor says I'm so terribly behindhand that he is ashamed of me."

"Gammon!"

"What?"

"I said, gammon. You're right enough. Forwarder than I am, and I've
been here two years."

"Oh no," I said.

"Yes, you are. Don't contradict; 'tisn't gentlemanly. He said your
English was weak?"

"How did you know?"

"Your Latin terribly deficient?"

"I say!" I cried, staring.

"Your writing execrable?"

"Mercer!"

"And your mathematics absolutely hopeless?"

"But you were at the other end of the room when he said that," I cried
aghast.

"Of course; I was being wigged by old Rebble because I couldn't go
through the forty-seventh of Book One; and I can't, and I feel as if I
never shall."

"I think I could," I said.

"Of course you could; nearly every chap in the school can but me. I can
learn some things easily enough; but I can't remember all about those
angles and squares, and all the rest of them."

"You soon will if you try," I whispered. "But how did you know the
doctor said all that to me?"

"Because he says it to every new boy. He said it to me, and made me so
miserable that I nearly ran away and if I hadn't had a very big cake in
my box, that I brought with me, I believe I should have broken my
heart."

"But I am very ignorant," I said, after a pause for thought, during
which my companion's words had rather a comforting effect.

"So's everybody. I'm awfully ignorant. What would be the good of
coming here if we weren't all behind? Oh, how I wish things could be
turned round!"

"Turned round?" I said wonderingly.

"Yes, so that I could know all the books of Euclid by heart, and have
old Rebble obliged to come and stand before me, and feel as if all he
had learned had run out of his head like water out of a sponge."

"Never mind," I said; "let's work and learn."

"You'll have to, my lad."

"Less talking there," said Mr Rebble.

"Oh, very well," whispered Mercer, and then he went on half aloud, but
indistinctly, repeating the problem in Euclid over which he had broken
down.

I glanced at Mr Rebble, and saw that he was watching us both intently,
and I bent over my Latin grammar, and began learning the feminine nouns
which ended