a better
world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn't be our
world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no
peace, and isn't meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folk
fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but I'd a deal sooner
see them doing that, than that they should have no fight in them. So
having recorded, and being about to record, my hero's fights of all
sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to give an account
of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows whom he
ever had to encounter in this manner.

It was drawing towards the close of Arthur's first half-year, and the
May evenings were lengthening out. Locking-up was not till eight
o'clock, and everybody was beginning to talk about what he would do in
the holidays. The shell, in which form all our dramatis personae now are,
were reading amongst other things the last book of Homer's "Iliad," and
had worked through it as far as the speeches of the women over Hector's
body. It is a whole school-day, and four or five of the School-house
boys (amongst whom are Arthur, Tom, and East) are preparing third lesson
together. They have finished the regulation forty lines, and are for
the most part getting very tired, notwithstanding the exquisite pathos
of Helen's lamentation. And now several long four-syllabled words come
together, and the boy with the dictionary strikes work.

"I am not going to look out any more words," says he; "we've done the
quantity. Ten to one we shan't get so far. Let's go out into the close."

"Come along, boys," cries East, always ready to leave the grind, as he
called it; "our old coach is laid up, you know, and we shall have one of
the new masters, who's sure to go slow and let us down easy."

So an adjournment to the close was carried _nem. con._, little Arthur
not daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply interested in what
they were reading, stayed quietly behind, and learnt on for his own
pleasure.

As East had said, the regular master of the form was unwell, and they
were to be heard by one of the new masters, quite a young man, who had
only just left the university. Certainly it would be hard lines, if, by
dawdling as much as possible in coming in and taking their places,
entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of
the regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of
boys for wasting time in scho