een baize curtain across the passage, which he draws at night,
and sits there with his door open, so he gets all the fire, and hears if
we come out of our studies after eight, or make a noise. However, he's
taken to sitting in the fifth-form room lately, so we do get a bit of
fire now sometimes; only to keep a sharp look-out that he don't catch
you behind his curtain when he comes down--that's all."

A quarter-past one now struck, and the bell began tolling for dinner, so
they went into the hall and took their places, Tom at the very bottom of
the second table, next to the praepostor (who sat at the end to keep
order there), and East a few paces higher. And now Tom for the first
time saw his future school-fellows in a body. In they came, some hot and
ruddy from football or long walks, some pale and chilly from hard
reading in their studies, some from loitering over the fire at the
pastrycook's, dainty mortals, bringing with them pickles and
sauce-bottles to help them with their dinners. And a great big-bearded
man, whom Tom took for a master, began calling over the names, while the
great joints were being rapidly carved on a third table in the corner by
the old verger and the housekeeper. Tom's turn came last, and meanwhile
he was all eyes, looking first with awe at the great man who sat close
to him, and was helped first, and who read a hard-looking book all the
time he was eating; and when he got up and walked off to the fire, at
the small boys round him, some of whom were reading, and the rest
talking in whispers to one another, or stealing one another's bread, or
shooting pellets, or digging their forks through the table-cloth.
However, notwithstanding his curiosity, he managed to make a capital
dinner by the time the big man called "Stand up!" and said grace.

As soon as dinner was over, and Tom had been questioned by such of his
neighbours as were curious as to his birth, parentage, education, and
other like matters, East, who evidently enjoyed his new dignity of
patron and Mentor, proposed having a look at the close, which Tom,
athirst for knowledge, gladly assented to, and they went out through the
quadrangle and past the big fives'-court, into the great playground.

"That's the chapel, you see," said East, "and there just behind it is
the place for fights; you see it's most out of the way of the masters,
who all live on the other side and don't come by here after first lesson
or callings-over. That's when the