schoolroom, which he would share
with some fifty others, and that he would be placed in a dormitory with
at least five or six besides himself.

"Have you been examined yet?" asked Kenrick.

"No; but Dr Lane asked me what books I had read, and he told me that I
was to go and take my chance in Mr Paton's form. What form is that?"

"It's what we call the Virgil form. Have you ever read Virgil?"

"No; at least only a few easy bits."

"I wish you joy, then."

"Why? what sort of a fellow is Mr Paton?"

"Mr Paton? he's not a man at all; he's a machine; he's the wheel of a
mill; he's a cast-iron automaton; he's--"

"The abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet,"
observed Henderson, who had caught a fragment of the conversation. "I'm
in his form, too, worse luck!"

"Hush! shut up, Henderson, and don't be profane," said Kenrick. "Well,
Evson, you'll soon find out what Paton's like; anything but `a patten of
bright gold' at any rate."

"Oh! oh! turn him out for his bad pun," said Henderson, hitting him with
a pellet of bread, for which offence he immediately received "fifty
lines" from the master at the other end of the table.

"Don't abuse Paton," said a boy named Daubeny, which name Henderson had
long ago contracted into Dubbs. "I always found him a capital master to
be under, and really very kind."

"Oh, _you_--yes," answered Kenrick; "if we were all gifted with your
mouselike stillness in school, my dear old Dubbs--"

"And your metallic capacity of grind, my dear old Dubbs," added
Henderson.

"And your ostrich-like digestion of crabbed rules, my dear old Dubbs;
why, then," said Kenrick, "we should all be boys after Paton's heart."

"Or Paton's pattern," suggested Henderson; so it was now Kenrick's turn
to shudder at a miserable attempt at a pun, and return Henderson's
missile, whereupon he got a _hundred_ lines, which made him pull a very
long face.

"Who's to be your tutor, Evson?" he asked after this interlude.

"I suppose you're going to pick him to pieces, now," said Daubeny,
smiling; "don't you believe half they say of him, Evson."

"Oh, if you're sharp, and successful, and polite, and gentlemanly, and
jolly, and all that sort of thing, he'll like you very much, and be
exceedingly kind to you; but if you are lazy, or mischievous, or stupid,
or at all a pickle, he'll ignore you, snub you, won't speak to you. I
wish you'd been in the same pupil-room with me."

"Depends on who h