ster. (Jolland's one of the
fellows at Grimstone's--Dr. Grimstone's I mean.) And what does old
Bangle know about it? He hasn't got to go there himself! And--and
Grimstone's jolly enough to fellows he likes, but he doesn't like
_me_--he's always sitting on me for something--and I hate some of the
fellows there, and altogether it's beastly. Do let me leave! If you
don't want me to go to a public school, I--I could stop at home and have
a private tutor--like Joe Twitterley!"

"It's all ridiculous nonsense, I tell you," said Paul angrily,
"ridiculous nonsense! And, once for all, I'll put a stop to it. I don't
approve of public schools for boys like you, and, what's more, I can't
afford it. As for private tutors, that's absurd! So you will just make
up your mind to stay at Crichton House as long as I think proper to keep
you there, and there's an end of that!"

At this final blow to all his hopes, Dick began to sob in a subdued
hopeless kind of way, which was more than his father could bear. To do
Paul justice, he had not meant to be quite so harsh when the boy was
about to set out for school, and, a little ashamed of his irritation, he
sought to justify his decision.

He chose to do this by delivering a short homily on the advantages of
school, by which he might lead Dick to look on the matter in the calm
light of reason and common sense, and commonplaces on the subject began
to rise to the surface of his mind, from the rather muddy depths to
which they had long since sunk.

He began to give Dick the benefit of all this stagnant wisdom, with a
feeling of surprise as he went on, at his own powerful and original way
of putting things.

"Now, you know, it's no use to cry like that," he began. "It's--ah--the
usual thing for boys at school, I'm quite aware, to go about fancying
they're very ill-used, and miserable, and all the rest of it, just as if
people in my position had their sons educated out of spite! It's one of
those petty troubles all boys have to go through. And you mark my words,
my boy, when they go out into the world and have real trials to put up
with, and grow middle-aged men, like me, why, they see what fools
they've been, Dick; they see what fools they've been. All the--hum, the
innocent games and delights of boyhood, and that sort of thing, you
know--come back to them--and then they look back to those hours passed
at school as the happiest, aye, the very happiest time of their life!"

"Well," said Dick,