It was this sort of thing which, as the term dragged on, made Bloomfield
more and more uncomfortable with his position. It was all very well for
Game, and Ashley, and Wibberly to declare that but for him Willoughby
would have gone to the dogs--it was all very well of them to make game
of and caricature Riddell and his failures. Seeing is believing; and
Bloomfield, whose heart was honest, and whose common sense, when left to
itself, was not altogether feeble, could not help making the unpleasant
discovery that he was not doing very much after all for Willoughby.

But the boat-race was now coming on. There, at any rate, was a sphere
in which he need fear no rival. With Parrett's boat at the head of the
river, and he its stroke, he would at any rate have one claim on the
obedience of Willoughby which nobody could gainsay.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

TELSON AND PARSON GO TO AN EVENING PARTY.

It was the Saturday before the boat-race, and the excitement of
Willoughby was working up every hour. Boys who were generally in the
habit of lying in bed till the chapel bell began to ring had been up at
six for a week past, to look at the practices on the river. Parliament
had adjourned till after the event, and even the doings of the rival
captains indoors were forgotten for a while in prospect of the still
more exciting contest out of doors.

Everybody--even the Welchers, who at the last moment had given up any
attempt to form a crew, and "scratched"--found it hard to think or talk
of any other subject, and beyond the school bounds, in Shellport itself,
a rumour of the coming race had got wind and attracted many outsiders to
the river banks.

But it was not the prospect of the coming race which this Saturday
afternoon was agitating the mind of Master Henry Brown.

Brown was a Limpet, belonging to the schoolhouse, who occupied the
distinguished position of being the only day-boarder in Willoughby. His
parents lived in Shellport, and thus had the benefit of the constant
society of their dear Harry; while the school, on the other hand, was
deprived of that advantage for a portion of every day in the term.

It was probably to make up for this deprivation that Mr and Mrs Brown
made it a practice of giving an evening party once a term, to which the
doctor and his ladies were always invited, and also any two of dear
Harry's friends he liked to name.

In this way the fond parents not only felt they were doing a polite and
neig