to put off
preparation till the last moment, and then galloped them off as best I
could. Instead of writing my exercises carefully, I drew skeletons on
the blotting-paper; instead of learning off my tenses, I read _Robinson
Crusoe_ under the desk, and trusted to my next-door neighbour to prompt
me when my turn came.

For a time my broken resolutions did not effect any apparent change in
my position in the classes or in the eyes of my masters. I was what
Evans (the boy who lent me the "crib") called lucky. I was called on to
translate just the passages I happened to have got off, or was
catechised on the declensions of my pet verb, and so kept up
appearances.

But that sort of thing could not go on for ever, and one day my exposure
took place.

I had dawdled away my time the evening previously with one thing and
another, always intending to set to work, but never doing so. My books
had lain open before me untouched, except when I took a fancy to
inscribing my name some scores of times on the title-page of each; my
dictionary remained shot and unheeded, except when I rounded the corners
of the binding with my penknife. I had played draughts clandestinely
with Evans part of the time, and part of the time I had lolled with my
elbows on the desk, staring at the head of the fellow in front of me.

Bedtime came, and I had not looked at my work.

"I'll wake early and cram it up," thought I, as I turned in.

I did wake up, but though the book was under my pillow I let the half-
hour before getting up slip away unused. At breakfast I made an effort
to glance at the lesson, but the boy opposite was performing such
wonderful tricks of balancing with his teaspoon and saucer and three
bread-crusts, that I could not devote attention to anything else. The
bell for classes rang ominously. I rushed to my place with _Caesar_ in
one hand and the "crib" in the other. I got flurried; I could not find
the place, or, when I found the place in the _Caesar_, I lost it in the
"crib."

The master, to add to my misery, was cross, and began proceedings by
ordering Evans to learn twenty lines for laughing in school-time. I
glanced at the fellows round me. Some were taking a last peep at their
books. Others, with bright and confident faces, waited quietly for the
lesson to begin. No one that I could see was as badly off as I. Every
one knew something. I knew nothing. Just at the last moment I found
the place in the "crib" and