isorder and wickedness, but he has acted with
such consummate ingenuity as to avoid even laying himself open to any
distinct proof of his many offences.

He is just now stopping for a minute in his game to talk to those three
boys, who have been strutting up and down the court arm in arm, and whom
we easily recognise. The one with the red puffy face, with an enormous
gold pin in his cravat, a bunch of charms hanging to his chain, and a
ring on his hand, which he loses no opportunity of displaying, is our
friend Jones, with vulgarity as usual stamped on every feature, and
displayed in every movement which he makes; the tall slim fellow, with
an air of feeble fastness, an indecisive mouth, a habit of running his
hand through his light-coloured hair, and a gaze which usually settles
in fixed admiration on his faultless boots, can be no one but Howard
Tracy; the third, a fellow with far more meaning and strength in his
face, betrays himself to be Mackworth, by the insinuating plausibility
and Belial-like grace of his manner and aspect. A dangerous serpent
this; one never sees him, or hears him speak, or observes the dark
glitter of his eye, without being reminded of a cerastes lythely
rustling through the dry grass towards its victim.

And there at last--I thought we should never see him--is our dear young
joker of jokes, the same unaltered Flip whom we know, running down the
school steps. His face is overflowing with mirth and fun, and now he is
stopping and holding both his sides for laughter, while, with little
touches of his own, he retails some of the strange blunders which Bliss
has made in the _viva voce_ examination that morning; to which his
friend Whalley listens with the same good-humoured smile which he had of
old. Henderson is a perfect mimic, but never uses his powers of mimicry
in an ill-natured spirit; and his imitation of Bliss's stolid perplexity
and Dr Lane's comments are very ludicrous. While he is in the middle
of this narrative, Bliss himself appears on the scene and relieves his
feelings by delivering the only pun he ever made in his life, and
observing, in a solemn tone of voice--

"Flip, don't be flippant;" a remark which he has substituted for the
"I'll lick you, Flip," of old days.

"You dear old Blissidas, I _think_ I've heard that pun once or twice
before," observes Henderson, calmly pulling undone the bow of Bliss's
necktie, and running off to escape retaliation, followed at his leisure