ose who ever felt and shared that gentle and
high-bred hospitality. Ay, many is the brave heart now doing its work
and bearing its load in country curacies, London chambers, under the
Indian sun, and in Australian towns and clearings, which looks back with
fond and grateful memory to that School-house drawing-room, and dates
much of its highest and best training to the lessons learnt there.

Besides Mrs. Arnold and one or two of the elder children, there were one
of the younger masters, young Brooke--who was now in the sixth, and had
succeeded to his brother's position and influence--and another
sixth-form boy there, talking together before the fire. The master and
young Brooke, now a great strapping fellow six feet high, eighteen years
old, and powerful as a coal-heaver, nodded kindly to Tom, to his intense
glory, and then went on talking; the other did not notice them. The
hostess, after a few kind words, which led the boys at once and
insensibly to feel at their ease, and to begin talking to one another,
left them with her own children while she finished a letter. The young
ones got on fast and well, Tom holding forth about a prodigious pony he
had been riding out hunting, and hearing stories of the winter glories
of the lakes, when tea came in, and immediately after the Doctor
himself.

How frank, and kind, and manly, was his greeting to the party by the
fire! It did Tom's heart good to see him and young Brooke shake hands,
and look one another in the face; and he didn't fail to remark, that
Brooke was nearly as tall, and quite as broad as the Doctor. And his cup
was full, when in another moment his master turned to him with another
warm shake of the hand, and, seemingly oblivious of all the late
scrapes which he had been getting into, said, "Ah, Brown, you here! I
hope you left your father and all well at home?"

"Yes, sir, quite well."

"And this is the little fellow who is to share your study. Well, he
doesn't look as we should like to see him. He wants some Rugby air, and
cricket. And you must take him some good long walks, to Bilton Grange
and Caldecott's Spinney, and show him what a little pretty country we
have about here."

Tom wondered if the Doctor knew that his visits to Bilton Grange were
for the purpose of taking rooks' nests (a proceeding strongly
discountenanced by the owner thereof), and those to Caldecott's Spinney
were prompted chiefly by the conveniences for setting night-lines. What
didn't