alf shop, and bought a pound of most particular sausages, East talking
pleasantly to Mrs. Porter while she put them in paper, and Tom doing the
paying part.

From Porter's they adjourned to Sally Harrowell's, where they found a
lot of School-house boys waiting for the roast potatoes, and relating
their own exploits in the day's match at the top of their voices. The
street opened at once into Sally's kitchen, a low brick-floored room,
with large recess for fire, and chimney-corner seats. Poor little Sally,
the most good-natured and much-enduring of womankind, was bustling
about, with a napkin in her hand, from her own oven to those of the
neighbours' cottages up the yard at the back of the house. Stumps, her
husband, a short, easy-going shoemaker, with a beery, humorous eye and
ponderous calves, who lived mostly on his wife's earnings, stood in
a corner of the room, exchanging shots of the roughest description of
repartee with every boy in turn. "Stumps, you lout, you've had too
much beer again to-day." "'Twasn't of your paying for, then." "Stumps's
calves are running down into his ankles; they want to get to grass."
"Better be doing that than gone altogether like yours," etc. Very poor
stuff it was, but it served to make time pass; and every now and then
Sally arrived in the middle with a smoking tin of potatoes, which was
cleared off in a few seconds, each boy as he seized his lot running
off to the house with "Put me down two-penn'orth, Sally;" "Put down
three-penn'orth between me and Davis," etc. How she ever kept the
accounts so straight as she did, in her head and on her slate, was a
perfect wonder.

East and Tom got served at last, and started back for the School-house,
just as the locking-up bell began to ring, East on the way recounting
the life and adventures of Stumps, who was a character. Amongst his
other small avocations, he was the hind carrier of a sedan-chair, the
last of its race, in which the Rugby ladies still went out to tea, and
in which, when he was fairly harnessed and carrying a load, it was the
delight of small and mischievous boys to follow him and whip his calves.
This was too much for the temper even of Stumps, and he would pursue his
tormentors in a vindictive and apoplectic manner when released, but was
easily pacified by twopence to buy beer with.

The lower-school boys of the School-house, some fifteen in number, had
tea in the lower-fifth school, and were presided over by the old verge