mly clad; but they looked as if the food they ate
did them no good, and was not enjoyed; as if they were too clean; and as
if their clothes were not comfortable. Every face seemed to have been
squeezed into the same mould, to grow it into one particular make, which
was inexpressive, inanimate, and dull, while they all wore the look of
being on the high-road to old-manism without having been allowed to stop
and play on the way, and be boys.

"Hush! hush!" came from the schoolmaster, and a pin might have been
heard to fall.

The boys devoured the doctor with their eyes. He was a stranger. It
was something to see, and it was a break in the horrible monotony of
their existence. Had they known the object of the visit, a tremendous
yell would have arisen, and it would have been formed of two
words--"Take me."

It was considered a model workhouse school, too, one of which the
guardians were proud. There was no tyranny, no brutality, but there was
endless drill and discipline, and not a scrap of that for which every
boy's heart naturally yearns;--"Home, sweet home."

No amount of management can make that and deck it with a mother's love;
and it must have been the absence of these elements which made the
Coleby boys look like three hundred white-faced small old men.

"Now, let me see, sir," said the master; "of course the matter will have
to be laid before the Board in the usual form, but you will make your
selection now. Good light, sir, to choose."

Mr Hippetts did not mean it unkindly; but he too spoke as if he were
busy over some goods he had to sell.

"Let me see. Ah! Coggley, stand out."

Coggley, a very thin boy of thirteen, a little more whitewashy than the
rest, stood out, and made a bow as if he were wiping his nose with his
right hand, and then curving it out at the doctor.

He was a nice, sad-looking boy, with railways across his forehead, and a
pinched-in nose; but he was very thin, and showed his shirt between the
top of his trousers and the bottom of his waistcoat, instead of upon his
chest, while it was from growth, not vanity, that he showed so much
ankle and wrist.

"Very good boy, sir. Had more marks than any one of his age last year."

"Won't do," said the doctor shortly.

"Too thin," said Mr Hippetts to himself. "Bunce!" he shouted.

Bunce stood out, or rather waddled forth, a stoutly-made boy with short
legs,--a boy who, if ever he had a chance, would grow fat and round,
with eyes