29--
Fisher is elected."

CHAPTER NINE.

CARRIED NEM. CON.

It must not be supposed that in the midst of the excitement of School
politics the intellectual side of the Fellsgarth juniors, life was being
quite neglected.

On the contrary, they complained that so far from being neglected it was
rather overdone.

The Classic juniors, for instance, suffered many things at the hands of
the cheerful Mr Stratton, who really worked hard to instil into their
opening minds some rudiments of those studies from which their side took
its name. He took pains to explain not only when a thing was wrong, but
why; and, unlike some of his calling, he devoted his chief attention to
his most backward boys. This was his great offence in the eyes of
D'Arcy and Wally and some of their fraternity, because under the
arrangement they came in for the special attention alluded to.

"That kid," said Wally, one day, _sotto voce_, as class was proceeding,
"has no more idea of teaching than my hat. We don't get a chance to
_do_ things ourselves, with him always messing about and looking over.
It's rude to look over. I mean to mark my exercise _private_ in
future."

"The thing is," said D'Arcy, "if he'd anything original to say it
wouldn't matter so. But he's always talking the same old rot about
roots. What's the use of a root, I should like to know, if you can't
bury it? Eh, kid?"

Fisher minor, to whom the question was addressed, did not know, and
remarked that they didn't teach Latin here the same way as when he
learned from a governess at home.

He regretted this admission almost as soon as he had made it. For Wally
and D'Arcy immediately got paper and began to draw fancy portraits of
Fisher minor learning Latin under the old _regime_. The point of these
illustrations was not so much in the figures as in the conversation.
The figures were more or less unlike the originals; at least, Fisher
minor declared that the three isosceles triangles piled by Wally one on
the top of the other were not a bit like his governess; while the plum-
pudding on two sticks, with a little pudding above for a head which
emitted four huge tears, the size of an orange, from either eye, he
regarded as a simple libel on himself. In one sense the likenesses were
speaking--that is, a gibbous balloon proceeded from the mouth of each
figure, wherein the following dialogue was indicated.
"_Governess_.--`Naughty little Tommy-wommy, didn't know his Latin