ugh; "he spends his days in
admiring that plaster Hercules. If you were close to him you would hear
him muttering, `Beautiful! Grand! Masterpieces! I will have two like
these in my own garden'. Poor old boy! he's quite cracked on the
subject. What would happen if they were to disappear?"

"There'd be a row, that's certain," answered Fred Wheeler, a particular
friend of Phil's. "Yes, there'd be ructions, I expect. But what a joke
it would be to take them away for a time!"

"Couldn't be done. Too heavy to move," answered Phil promptly. "But we
might do something else," he added, nothing loth for a piece of
mischief. "Now what could we do, you fellows?"

Various suggestions were offered, but none of them was practicable, and
the hour striking a few moments later, the boys departed to the school
and left the stout gentleman still gazing lovingly at his statues.

"Old Bumble", as he was generally, known to Ebden's boys, was a
gentleman of the name of Workman, Mr Julius Workman, a wealthy merchant
of the city of London, who owned vast property in the neighbourhood of
Highgate, and, indeed, was landlord of the houses which formed the
terrace in which the school stood. Consequently he was a man of some
position; in fact in Mr Ebden's eyes he was one with whom it was well
to be on the best of terms, and to treat with that amount of deference
due to a man of consequence who holds one's fortune in his hands. To
tell the truth, Mr Julius Workman was not altogether an agreeable
person. Fat and ungainly, he was far from being the good-natured
individual one might have expected. Increasing riches had not softened
his nature, for he was grumpy and fussy, and apt to ride the high horse
on every occasion. His tenants stood in awe of him, and, strange as it
may seem, Mr Ebden, the strong-minded man, who could successfully rule
a number of high-spirited boys, feared him more than all the rest. But
there was good reason for this. For fifteen years Ebden's School had
been in existence, and its increasing popularity had been a source of
satisfaction to its head. Now to change the locality of the school and
alter that paragraph in the advertisement which ran "at a
charmingly-situated building, in the salubrious neighbourhood of
Highgate" might have been to diminish the popularity of the school.
Highgate was thought much of by fond parents, and more than one pupil
had been sent to Ebden's in order that he might be in that