ditions doing errands for their
juniors. The head boys had no bounds and could go to Mrs Cross's
whenever they liked; they actually, therefore, made themselves
go-betweens, and would get anything from either Mrs Cross's or Mrs
Jones's for any boy, no matter how low in the school, between the hours
of a quarter to nine and nine in the morning, and a quarter to six and
six in the afternoon. By degrees, however, the boys grew bolder, and the
shops, though not openly declared in bounds again, were tacitly allowed
to be so.

CHAPTER XLIV

I may spare the reader more details about my hero's school days. He
rose, always in spite of himself, into the Doctor's form, and for the
last two years or so of his time was among the praepostors, though he
never rose into the upper half of them. He did little, and I think the
Doctor rather gave him up as a boy whom he had better leave to himself,
for he rarely made him construe, and he used to send in his exercises or
not, pretty much as he liked. His tacit, unconscious obstinacy had in
time effected more even than a few bold sallies in the first instance
would have done. To the end of his career his position _inter pares_ was
what it had been at the beginning, namely, among the upper part of the
less reputable class--whether of seniors or juniors--rather than among
the lower part of the more respectable.

Only once in the whole course of his school life did he get praise from
Dr Skinner for any exercise, and this he has treasured as the best
example of guarded approval which he has ever seen. He had had to write
a copy of Alcaics on "The dogs of the monks of St Bernard," and when the
exercise was returned to him he found the Doctor had written on it: "In
this copy of Alcaics--which is still excessively bad--I fancy that I can
discern some faint symptoms of improvement." Ernest says that if the
exercise was any better than usual it must have been by a fluke, for he
is sure that he always liked dogs, especially St Bernard dogs, far too
much to take any pleasure in writing Alcaics about them.

"As I look back upon it," he said to me but the other day, with a hearty
laugh, "I respect myself more for having never once got the best mark for
an exercise than I should do if I had got it every time it could be got.
I am glad nothing could make me do Latin and Greek verses; I am glad
Skinner could never get any moral influence over me; I am glad I was idle
at school, and I am g