t might be worth their while at bed-
time to smuggle a knife, fork, and plate a-piece into the dormitory, in
case, as Arthur worded it, there should be some fun going.

Wonderful is the intuition of youth! These four simple-minded,
uncultured lads knew what Arthur meant, even as he spoke, and joyfully
did him and Dig homage for the rest of the evening, and at bed-time
tucked each his platter under his waistcoat and scaled the stairs as the
curfew rang, grimly accoutred with a fork in one trouser pocket and a
knife in the other.

But whatever the cause, the Shell-fish in Railsford's presented a very
green appearance when they answered to their names next morning, and
were in an irritable frame of mind most of the day. Their bad temper
took the form of a dead set on the unhappy Monsieur Lablache, who,
during the first day of his vicarious office, led the existence of a pea
on a frying-pan. They went up to him with difficulties in Greek prose,
knowing that he comprehended not a word of that language; they asked his
permission for what they knew he could not grant, and on his refusal got
up cries of tyranny and despotism wherewith to raise the lower school;
they whistled German war songs outside his door, and asked him the date
of the Battle of Waterloo. When he demanded their names they told him
"Ainger," "Barnworth," "Wake"; and when he ordered them to stay in an
hour after school, they coolly stopped work five minutes before the bell
rang and walked under his very nose into the playground.

Poor monsieur, he was no disciplinarian, and he knew it. His backbone
was limp, and he never did the right thing at the right time. He
shrugged when he ought to have been chastising; and he stormed when he
ought to have held his tongue. Nobody cared for him; everybody wondered
why he of all men worked at the trade of schoolmaster. Perhaps if some
of my lords and baronets in the Shell had known that far away, in a tiny
cottage at Boulogne, this same contemptible Frenchman was keeping alive
from week to week, with his hard-earned savings, a paralysed father and
three motherless little girls, who loved the very ground he trod on, and
kissed his likeness every night before they crept to their scantily-
covered beds--if they had known that this same poor creature said a
prayer for his beloved France every day, and tingled in every vein to
hear her insulted even in jest--perhaps they would have understood
better why he flared up n