cking up a row near the infirmary.

There were enough of us to turn out two good teams at football, or to
run a big paper-chase across country, or get up a grand concert of an
evening; and not too many of us to crowd into the long dormitory, where,
for all we were interfered with, we might have prolonged our bolster
matches "from eve to dewy morn."

In time we came to look upon our confinement as rather a spree than
otherwise, and this feeling was considerably heightened by the arrival
of several hampers at the beginning of Christmas week, including a
magnificent one from Dr Allsuch himself, along with a message bidding
us be sure and have a merry Christmas. We voted the doctor a brick, and
drank his health in ginger beer, with great enthusiasm, to the toast of
"Dr Allsuch, and all such bricks!"

It was on Christmas Eve, after a specially grand banquet off the
contents of one of these hampers, that we crowded round the big common-
hall fire in a very complacent frame of mind, uncommonly well satisfied
and comfortable within and without.

"I don't know," said Lamb meditatively, cracking a walnut between his
finger and thumb, and slowly skinning it--"I don't know; Gilks might
have done us a worse turn after all."

"I rather wish he'd make a yearly thing of it," said Ellis. "They say
he's pulled through all right."

"Oh yes, he's all right! and so are the other three. In fact, French
and Addley never had scarlet fever at all. It was a false alarm."

"Well," said Lamb, "I'm jolly glad of it! I wouldn't have cared for any
of them to die, you know."

Lamb said this in a tone as if we should all be rather surprised to hear
him say so.

"Nobody ever did die at Ferriby, did they?" said Jim Sparrow, the
youngest and tenderest specimen we had at Jolliffe's.

It was rather cheek of a kid like Jim to interpose at all in a
conversation of his seniors, and it seemed as if he was going to get
snubbed by receiving no reply, when Fergus suddenly took the thing up.

"Eh, young Jim Sparrow, what's that you're saying?"

Fergus was the wag of our house--indeed, he was the only Irishman we
could boast of, and the fact of his being an Irishman always made us
inclined to laugh whenever he spoke. We could see now by the twinkle in
his eye that he was going to let off the steam at Jim Sparrow's expense.

"I said," replied Jim, blushing rather to find every body listening to
him, "nobody's ever died at Ferriby, have they?"