g in the wide fields in Latin verse, but
as I had done it with Papa I knew how to do it, and it was nearly all
right, and he put me in the fourth form under Mr Templer, and I have
to begin a new Latin grammar not like the old, but much harder. I
know you wish me to work, and I will try very hard. With best love to
Joey and Charlotte, and to Papa, I remain, your affectionate son,
ERNEST."

Nothing could be nicer or more proper. It really did seem as though he
were inclined to turn over a new leaf. The boys had all come back, the
examinations were over, and the routine of the half year began; Ernest
found that his fears about being kicked about and bullied were
exaggerated. Nobody did anything very dreadful to him. He had to run
errands between certain hours for the elder boys, and to take his turn at
greasing the footballs, and so forth, but there was an excellent spirit
in the school as regards bullying.

Nevertheless, he was far from happy. Dr Skinner was much too like his
father. True, Ernest was not thrown in with him much yet, but he was
always there; there was no knowing at what moment he might not put in an
appearance, and whenever he did show, it was to storm about something. He
was like the lion in the Bishop of Oxford's Sunday story--always liable
to rush out from behind some bush and devour some one when he was least
expected. He called Ernest "an audacious reptile" and said he wondered
the earth did not open and swallow him up because he pronounced Thalia
with a short i. "And this to me," he thundered, "who never made a false
quantity in my life." Surely he would have been a much nicer person if
he had made false quantities in his youth like other people. Ernest
could not imagine how the boys in Dr Skinner's form continued to live;
but yet they did, and even throve, and, strange as it may seem, idolised
him, or professed to do so in after life. To Ernest it seemed like
living on the crater of Vesuvius.

He was himself, as has been said, in Mr Templer's form, who was snappish,
but not downright wicked, and was very easy to crib under. Ernest used
to wonder how Mr Templer could be so blind, for he supposed Mr Templer
must have cribbed when he was at school, and would ask himself whether he
should forget his youth when he got old, as Mr Templer had forgotten his.
He used to think he never could possibly forget any part of it.

Then there was Mrs Jay, who was sometimes very ala