l-day, and four or five of the
School-house boys (amongst whom are Arthur, Tom, and East) are preparing
third lesson together. They have finished the regulation forty lines,
and are for the most part getting very tired, notwithstanding
the exquisite pathos of Helen's lamentation. And now several long
four-syllabled words come together, and the boy with the dictionary
strikes work.

"I am not going to look out any more words," says he; "we've done the
quantity. Ten to one we shan't get so far. Let's go out into the close."

"Come along, boys," cries East, always ready to leave "the grind," as he
called it; "our old coach is laid up, you know, and we shall have one of
the new masters, who's sure to go slow and let us down easy."

So an adjournment to the close was carried nem. con., little Arthur not
daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply interested in what they
were reading, stayed quietly behind, and learnt on for his own pleasure.

As East had said, the regular master of the form was unwell, and they
were to be heard by one of the new masters--quite a young man, who had
only just left the university. Certainly it would be hard lines if,
by dawdling as much as possible in coming in and taking their places,
entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of
the regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of
boys for wasting time in school, they could not spin out the lesson so
that he should not work them through more than the forty lines. As to
which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master
and his form--the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance,
that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a shell lesson; the
former, that there was no fixed quantity, but that they must always be
ready to go on to fifty or sixty lines if there were time within the
hour. However, notwithstanding all their efforts, the new master got on
horribly quick. He seemed to have the bad taste to be really interested
in the lesson, and to be trying to work them up into something like
appreciation of it, giving them good, spirited English words, instead
of the wretched bald stuff into which they rendered poor old Homer, and
construing over each piece himself to them, after each boy, to show them
how it should be done.

Now the clock strikes the three-quarters; there is only a quarter of an
hour more, but the forty lines are all but done. So the boys, one