es about now and then in the play-ground
and calls it athletics. He gets up Caesar with a crib and Todhunter
with a key, and calls it classics and mathematics. He loafs about with
a toady and calls it friendship. In short, he catches the Bolsover dry-
rot, and calls it a public-school training:

What is it makes Benjamin and his seventy-nine school-fellows (for
Bolsover had its full number of eighty boys this term) in such a
particularly ill-humour this grey October morning? Have his professors
and masters gently hinted to him that he is expected to know his lessons
next time he goes into class? Or has the experienced matron been
overdoing her attention to his morals? Ask him. "What!" he says,
"don't you know what the row is? It's enough to make anybody shirty.
Frampton, this new head-master, you know, he's only been here a week or
two, he's going to upset everything. I wish to goodness old Mullany had
stuck on, cad as he was. He let us alone, but this beast Frampton's
smashing the place up. What do you think?--you'd never guess, he's made
a rule the fellows are all to tub every morning, whether they like it or
not. What do you call that? I know I'll get my governor to make a row
about it. It won't wash, I can tell you. What business has he to make
us tub, eh, do you hear? That's only one thing. He came and jawed us
in the big room this morning, and said he meant to make football
compulsory! There! You needn't gape as if you thought I was gammoning.
I'm not, I mean it. Football's to be compulsory. Every man Jack's got
to play, whether he can or not. I call it brutal! The only thing is,
it won't be done. The fellows will kick. I shall. I'm not going to
play football to please a cad like Frampton, or any other cad!"

What Benjamin says is, for a wonder, the truth. A curious change had
come over Bolsover since the end of last term. Old Mr Mullany, good
old fossil that he was, had resigned. The boys had heard casually of
the event at the end of last term. But the old gentleman so seldom
appeared in their midst, and when he did, so rarely made any show of
authority, that the school had grown to look upon him as an inoffensive
old fogey, whose movements made very little difference to anybody.

It was not till the holidays were over, and Mr Frampton introduced
himself as the new head-master, that Bolsover awoke to the knowledge
that a change had taken place. Mr Frampton--he was not even a "Docto