king at a book. But most of
the boys were talking, laughing, singing as if there were no such
thing as lessons.

Sometimes a master might look in, or a monitor would wander down the
aisle. But most of the time there was nothing to keep a boy from
following his own sweet will.

"I say, Smith!" one called out, "lend me a shilling, will you? I want
to buy Grisby's white rat, and I haven't got enough." A fat boy who
looked as if he thought mostly of meal-times was telling everybody in
his neighborhood: "I've just got a box from home. Jam and fruitcake
and gooseberry tarts. Come and see me to-night in the dormitory, you
fellows."

Somebody else called out: "My knife's so dull I'll never get my name
carved on this desk. Give me your knife, Willoughby: it's sharper."

There were boys having fencing-matches with rulers across the aisle.
There were others who took no end of pains to make paper arrows, or
spitballs that would stick to the ceiling. In the corners of their
desks might be bird's eggs in need of fresh air. Some of the boys were
reading adventure stories, covered up to look like school-books.

In the midst of this Babel, you were expected to get your lessons as
well as you could.

When it came to meal-times, you went into what was called "Big Hall,"
where four hundred boys ate together.

The beef was tough enough to make a suitcase: the milk was like chalk
and water: the potatoes would have done to plaster a ceiling or cement
a wall. How different it all was from the good though simple fare at
home!

"Want to join a brewing company?" asked the boy across the table.

"What's a brewing company?" inquired Wilf.

"We buy sausages and cook 'em in saucepans over the fire--when we can
find a fire."

"Yes, you can count me in," said Wilf. So it didn't make so much
difference after that, if he couldn't eat what was set before him at
the table.

But usually the boys brought robust appetites to their meals, for they
went in heavily for all forms of athletics. The boys who didn't make
the teams had to drill in the gymnasium or run round and round an open
air track a mile and a half long. If you shirked, the boys themselves
saw to it that you got punished.

When Wilf came home to Cheshire for the long vacations he found some
poor little ragamuffins who had no fun in their lives, and started a
club for them in his own house. There were no boy scouts in those
days, when Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Ernest Thompson S