H THE DOCTOR.

Here was an announcement for Master Tom! He was to go up to tea the
first night, just as if he were a sixth or fifth form boy, and of
importance in the school world, instead of the most reckless young
scapegrace amongst the fags. He felt himself lifted on to a higher
social and moral platform at once. Nevertheless, he couldn't give up
without a sigh the idea of the jolly supper in the housekeeper's room
with East and the rest, and a rush round to all the studies of his
friends afterward, to pour out the deeds and wonders of the holidays,
to plot fifty plans for the coming half-year, and to gather news of
who had left, and what new boys had come, who had got who's study, and
where the new praepostors slept. However, Tom consoled himself with
thinking that he couldn't have done all this with the new boy at his
heels, and so marched off along the passages to the Doctor's private
house with his young charge in tow, in monstrous good humor with
himself and all the world.

It is needless, and would be impertinent, to tell how the two young
boys were received in that drawing-room. The lady who presided there
is still living, and has carried with her to her peaceful home in the
North the respect and love of all those who ever felt and shared that
gentle and high-bred hospitality. Ay, many is the brave heart now
doing its work and bearing its load in country curacies, London
chambers, under the Indian sun, and in Australian towns and clearings,
which looks back with fond and grateful memory to that School-house
drawing-room, and dates much of its highest and best training to the
lessons learnt there.

Besides Mrs. Arnold and one or two of the elder children, there were
one of the young masters, young Brooke, who was now in the sixth, and
had succeeded to his brother's position and influence, and another
sixth-form boy, talking together before the fire. The master and young
Brooke, now a great strapping fellow six feet high, eighteen years
old, and powerful as a coal-heaver, nodded kindly to Tom, to his
intense glory, and then went on talking; the other did not notice
them. The hostess, after a few kind words, which led the boys at once
and insensibly to feel at their ease, and to begin talking to one
another, left them with her own children while she finished a letter.
The young ones got on fast and well, Tom holding forth about a
prodigious pony he had been riding out hunting, and hearing stories of
the winte