e daily round, the common task.

It was early in Christmas week, and the female officers were doing their
best to excite merriment over the decorations. Snow was falling, but the
flakes, after hesitating for a moment, thawed into sludge on the surface
of the asphalte yard. Seeing Alfred shivering about under the shed, the
superintendent sent him to the office for a plan of the school drainage,
which had lately been reconstructed on the most sanitary principles. The
boy found the plan on the table, under a little brass dog which someone
had given the superintendent as a paper-weight.

"A dog!" he said to himself, taking it up carefully. It was a setter
with a front paw raised as though it sighted game. Alfred stroked its
back and felt its muzzle. Then he pushed it along the polished table,
and thought of all the things he could make it do, if only he had it for
a bit. He put it down, patted its head again with his cold hand, and
took up the plan. But somehow the dog suddenly looked at him with a
friendly smile, and seemed to move its tail and silky ears. He caught it
up, glanced round, slipped it up his waistcoat, and ran as hard as he
could go.

"Thank you my boy," said the superintendent, taking the plan. "You've
not been here long, have you?"

"Oh yes, sir, a tremenjus long time!" said Alfred, shaking all over,
whilst the dog's paw kept scratching through his shirt.

"My memory isn't what it was," sighed the superintendent to himself, and
he thought of the days when he had struggled to learn the name at least
of every boy in his charge.

That afternoon Alfred went into school filled with mixed shame,
apprehension, and importance, such as Eve might have felt if she could
have gone back to a girls' school with the apple. Lessons began with a
"combined recitation" from Shakespeare.

"Now," said the teacher, "go on at 'Mercy on me.'"

"'Methinks nobody should be sad but I,'" shouted seventy mouths, opening
like one in a unison of sing-song.

"Now, you there!" cried the teacher. "You with your hand up your
waistcoat! You're not attending. Go on at 'Only for wantonness.'"

"'By my Christendom,'" Alfred blurted out, almost bringing dog and all
to light in his terror:

"'So I were out of prison and kept sheep,
I should be merry as the day is long.
And so I should be here, but that I doubt--'"

"That'll do," said the teacher, "Now attend."

The seventy joined in with "My uncle practises," and Alfred turne