that he was, took special
pains with me, so that at the end of the year I was pronounced competent
to take a situation as an office-boy or junior clerk, or any like post
to which my amiable uncle might destine me.

I was not sorry to leave Stonebridge House, as you may guess. During
the last year, certainly, things were better than they had been. No
reference was made on any occasion, either in public or in private, to
the great rebellion of that summer. The Henniker never quite got over
the shake she had had when we rose in arms against her, and Mr Ladislaw
appeared proportionately subdued, so on the whole things were rather
more tolerable. And for lack of my lost friend, I managed to improve
the acquaintance of the good-natured Flanagan, besides retaining the
favour of the smiling Hawkesbury.

So passed another year, at the end of which I found myself a wiser and a
sadder boy, with my back turned at length on Stonebridge House, and my
face towards the wide, wide world.

CHAPTER NINE.

HOW I REPLIED TO AN ADVERTISEMENT AND WAITED FOR THE ANSWER.

The day that witnessed my departure from Stonebridge House found me, I
am bound to confess, very little improved by my year or two's residence
under that dull roof. I do not blame it all on the school, or even on
Miss Henniker, depressing as both were.

There is no reason why, even at a school for backward and troublesome
boys, a fellow shouldn't improve, if he gave his mind to it. But that
is just where I failed. I didn't give my mind to it. In fact, I made
up my mind it was no use trying to improve, and therefore didn't try.
The consequence was, that after Jack Smith left, I cast in my lot with
the rest of the backward and troublesome boys, and lost all ambition to
be much better than the rest of them.

Flanagan, the fellow I liked best, was always good-humoured and lively,
but I'm not sure that he would have been called a boy of good
principles. At any rate, he never professed to be particularly
ambitious in any such way, and in that respect was very different from
Hawkesbury, who, by the time he left Stonebridge House, six months
before me, to go to a big public school, had quite impressed me with the
worth of his character.

But this is a digression. As I was saying, I left Stonebridge House a
good deal wilder, and more rackety, and more sophisticated, than I had
entered it two years before. However, I left it also with considerably
more knowledge