e
big hall, and gazed up in an awestruck way at the portrait of the
Jacobean knight to whom Low Heath owed its foundation.

To me it was all like a dream. I woke to discover a paper on the desk
before me; a paper bristling with questions, each of them challenging me
to get into the school if I could. Then I remember dashing my pen into
the ink and beginning to write.

"Keep cool. Keep your eye on the clock. Try one question at a time,"
echoed a voice in my ear.

How lonely I felt there all by myself! How I wished I could turn and
see _her_ at my side!

The clock crawled round from eleven to three, and I went on writing.
Then I remember a hand coming along the desk and taking the papers out
of my sight. Then a bewildered train journey home, and a hundred
questions at the other end.

I went on dreaming for a week, conscious sometimes of my mother's face,
sometimes of Miss Steele's, sometimes of Mr Evans's. But what I did
with myself in the interval I should be sorry to be called upon to tell.

At last, one morning, I woke with a vengeance, as I held in my hand a
paper on which were printed a score or so of names, third among which I
made out the words--

"Jones, T.--(Miss M. Steele, High School, Fallowfield): Exhibition,
L40."

So I was a Low Heathen at last!

CHAPTER SIX.

UP TO FORM.

I have reason to fear that for a fortnight after I received the
astounding news of my scholastic success I was an intolerable nuisance
to my friends and a ridiculous spectacle to my enemies.

I may have had some excuse. I had worked hard, and got myself into a
"tilted" state of mind altogether. Still, that was no reason why I
should consider that the whole world was standing still to look on at my
triumph; still less why I should patronise my mother and Miss Steele and
Miss Bousfield as three well-intentioned persons who had just had an
object-lesson in the inferiority of their sex.

My mother and Miss Steele were too delighted to mind my airs. They were
really proud--one to be my mother, the other to be my "coach." And when
I strutted in and talked as if they barely knew how honoured they were
by my company, they laughed good-humouredly, and said to one another,--

"No wonder he's pleased with himself, dear boy."

Miss Bousfield was less disposed to bow the knee.

"I hope you won't forget what you owe to Miss Steele," said she. "I
never hoped she could make as much as she did of such unpromising
mate