uantity. 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._,[7] little
Arthur not daring to lift up his voice; but, being deeply interested in
what they were reading, he stayed quietly behind, and learned on for his
own pleasure.

[Footnote 7: _Nemine contradicente_ is a Latin expression meaning _no
one speaking in opposition_.]

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 school, they could not spin out the lesson so
that he should not work them through more than the forty lines; as to
which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master
and his form, the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance,
that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a shell lesson, the
former that there was no fixed quantity, but that they must always be
ready to go on to fifty or sixty lines if there were time within the
hour. However, notwithstanding all their efforts, the new master got on
horribly quick; he seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested
in the lesson, and to be trying to work them up into something like
appreciation of it, giving them good spirited English words, instead of
the wretched bald stuff into which they rendered poor old Homer; and
construing over each piece himself to them, after each boy, to show them
how it should be done.

Now the clock strikes the three quarters; there is only a quarter of an
hour more; but the forty lines are all but done. So the boys, one after
another, who are called up, stick more and more, and make balder and
ever more bald work of it. The poor young master is pretty near beat by
this time, and feels ready to knock his head against the wall, or his
fingers against somebody else's head. So he gives up altogether the
lower and middle parts of the form, and looks round in despair