jects more delicate than they had yet touched upon. Here Ernest's
unconscious self took the matter up and made a resistance to which his
conscious self was unequal, by tumbling him off his chair in a fit of
fainting.

Dr Martin was sent for and pronounced the boy to be seriously unwell; at
the same time he prescribed absolute rest and absence from nervous
excitement. So the anxious parents were unwillingly compelled to be
content with what they had got already--being frightened into leading him
a quiet life for the short remainder of the holidays. They were not
idle, but Satan can find as much mischief for busy hands as for idle
ones, so he sent a little job in the direction of Battersby which
Theobald and Christina undertook immediately. It would be a pity, they
reasoned, that Ernest should leave Roughborough, now that he had been
there three years; it would be difficult to find another school for him,
and to explain why he had left Roughborough. Besides, Dr Skinner and
Theobald were supposed to be old friends, and it would be unpleasant to
offend him; these were all valid reasons for not removing the boy. The
proper thing to do, then, would be to warn Dr Skinner confidentially of
the state of his school, and to furnish him with a school list annotated
with the remarks extracted from Ernest, which should be appended to the
name of each boy.

Theobald was the perfection of neatness; while his son was ill upstairs,
he copied out the school list so that he could throw his comments into a
tabular form, which assumed the following shape--only that of course I
have changed the names. One cross in each square was to indicate
occasional offence; two stood for frequent, and three for habitual
delinquency.

Smoking Drinking beer Swearing Notes
at the "Swan and Obscene
and Bottle." Language.
Smith O O XX Will smoke
next half
Brown XXX O X
Jones X XX XXX
Robinson XX XX X

And thus through the whole school.

Of course, in justice to Ernest, Dr Skinner would be bound over to
secrecy before a word was said to him, but, Ernest being thus protected,
he could not be furnished with the facts too completely.

CHAPTER XLIII

So important did Theobald consider this