y, who had
a turn for mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the
time this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor's plan, and
at the Doctor's rate of going. He considered that it might be done
in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting from the
Doctor's last, or sixty-second, birthday.

But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must
have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for
he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have
touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he walked up
and down that part of the courtyard which was at the side of the house,
with the stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their heads
cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing they were in worldly
affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get near enough to
his creaking shoes to attract his attention to one sentence of a tale
of distress, that vagabond was made for the next two days. It was so
notorious in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut
these marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows, and turn them
out of the courtyard, before they could make the Doctor aware of their
presence; which was sometimes happily effected within a few yards of
him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as he jogged to and
fro. Outside his own domain, and unprotected, he was a very sheep for
the shearers. He would have taken his gaiters off his legs, to give
away. In fact, there was a story current among us (I have no idea, and
never had, on what authority, but I have believed it for so many
years that I feel quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one
winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters on a beggar-woman, who
occasioned some scandal in the neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant
from door to door, wrapped in those garments, which were universally
recognized, being as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral. The
legend added that the only person who did not identify them was the
Doctor himself, who, when they were shortly afterwards displayed at the
door of a little second-hand shop of no very good repute, where such
things were taken in exchange for gin, was more than once observed to
handle them approvingly, as if admiring some curious novelty in the
pattern, and considering them an improvement on his own.

It was very pleasant to see the Doctor