ached, one boy at a time stole out and
down the steps, as the masters' backs were turned, and mingled with
the general crowd on the forms below. Tom and East had successfully
occupied the desk some half-dozen times, and were grown so reckless
that they were in the habit of playing small games with fives'-balls
inside, when the masters were at the other end of the Big School. One
day, as ill-luck would have it, the game became more exciting than
usual, and the ball slipped through East's fingers, and rolled slowly
down the steps, and out into the middle of the school, just as the
masters turned in their walk, and faced round upon the desk. The young
delinquents watched their master, through the look-out holes, marching
slowly down the school straight upon their retreat, while all the boys
in the neighborhood of course stopped their work to look on; and not
only were they ignominiously drawn out, and caned over the hand then
and there, but their characters for steadiness were gone from that
time. However, as they only shared the fate of some three-fourths of
the rest of the form, this did not weigh heavily upon them.

[8] #Veto#: the act of forbidding; a prohibition.

MONTHLY EXAMINATIONS.

In fact, the only occasions on which they cared about the matter were
the monthly examinations, when the Doctor came round to examine their
form, for one long awful hour, in the work which they had done in the
preceding month. The second monthly examination came round soon after
Tom's fall, and it was with anything but lively anticipations that he
and the other lower-fourth boys came in to prayers on the morning of
the examination day.

Prayers and calling-over seemed twice as short as usual, and before
they could get construes of a tithe[9] of the hard passages marked in
the margin of their books, they were all seated round, and the Doctor
was standing in the middle, talking in whispers to the master. Tom
couldn't hear a word which passed, and never lifted his eyes from his
book; but he knew by a kind of magnetic instinct that the Doctor's
under lip was coming out, and his eye beginning to burn, and his
gown getting gathered up more and more tightly in his left hand.
The suspense was agonizing, and Tom knew that he was sure on such
occasions to make an example of the School-house boys. "If he would
only begin," thought Tom, "I shouldn't mind."

[9] #Tithe#: a tenth.

At last the whispering ceased, and the name which w