r; sometimes with both hands, applied after the fashion of
blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this department for a
mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to My Dearert Childerrenerr, let
us say, for example, about the beautiful coming to the Sepulchre; and
repeating the word Sepulchre (commonly used among infants) five hundred
times, and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy
smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole
hot-bed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes,
whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled
in High Market for the purpose.

Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy
exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having
learned it, could impart it much better than the teachers; as being
more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood
towards the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley
Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received
from the jumble into a better school.

'So you want to go and see your sister, Hexam?'

'If you please, Mr Headstone.'

'I have half a mind to go with you. Where does your sister live?'

'Why, she is not settled yet, Mr Headstone. I'd rather you didn't see
her till she is settled, if it was all the same to you.'

'Look here, Hexam.' Mr Bradley Headstone, highly certificated
stipendiary schoolmaster, drew his right forefinger through one of the
buttonholes of the boy's coat, and looked at it attentively. 'I hope
your sister may be good company for you?'

'Why do you doubt it, Mr Headstone?'

'I did not say I doubted it.'

'No, sir; you didn't say so.'

Bradley Headstone looked at his finger again, took it out of the
buttonhole and looked at it closer, bit the side of it and looked at it
again.

'You see, Hexam, you will be one of us. In good time you are sure to
pass a creditable examination and become one of us. Then the question
is--'

The boy waited so long for the question, while the schoolmaster looked
at a new side of his finger, and bit it, and looked at it again, that at
length the boy repeated:

'The question is, sir--?'

'Whether you had not better leave well alone.'

'Is it well to leave my sister alone, Mr Headstone?'

'I do not say so, because I do not know. I put it to you. I ask you to
think of it. I want you to consider. You know h