boys at Saint Winifred's were not
overworked; there was enough work to stimulate but not to oppress them,
and Walter's work grew more promising every day. He was fond of praise,
and Mr Percival, while he always took care so to praise him as to
obviate the danger of conceit, was not so scant of his approbation as
most men are. His warm and generous appreciation encouraged and
rewarded Walter's exertions, so that he was quite the "star" of his
form. Many other boys did well under Mr Percival. There was a bright
and cheerful emulation among them all, and they took especial pains with
their exercises, which Mr Percival varied in every possible way, so as
to call out the imagination and the fancy, to exercise both the reason
and the understanding, and to test the powers of attention and research.
His method was so successful that it was often a real pleasure to look
over the exercises of his form, and he had adopted one plan for keeping
up the boys' interest in them, which was eminently useful. All the
_best_ exercises, if they attained to any positive excellence, were sent
to Dr Lane; and at the end of the half-year, a number, printed opposite
to the boy's name, showed how often he had thus been "sent up for good."
If in one fortnight _four_ separate exercises were so sent up, the form
obtained, by this proof of industry, the remission of an hour's work,
and as this honour could never be cheaply won it was highly prized. Now
two or three times Walter's unusually brilliant exercises had been the
chief contribution towards winning these remitted hours, and this
success caused him double happiness, because it necessarily made him a
general favourite with the form. Henderson (who had only got a single
remove at the beginning of the term, but had worked so hard in his new
form that he had succeeded in his purpose of winning a remove _during_
the term, and so being again in the same division with Walter) did his
best to earn the same distinction, but he only succeeded when the
exercise happened to be an English one, and on a subject which gave some
opportunity for his sense of the ludicrous. He generally contrived to
introduce some purely fictitious "Eastern Apologue" as he called it; and
as he rarely managed to keep the correct Oriental colouring, his
combinations of Sultans, Tchokadars, Odaliques, and white bears, were
sometimes so inexpressibly absurd that Mr Percival, to avoid fits of
laughter, was obliged to look over