that here for a hat?"

"But," said I, "I'm an exhibitioner."

"All the more shame on you not dressing like a gentleman. Look at those
boots; I am sure your mother did not buy them for you. Take them off at
once, sir--and put on your proper ones."

"Aren't they--isn't it the thing, the form, you know, for--"

"Form! Fiddlesticks. The thing at Low Heath is to behave and dress
like gentlemen, not like vulgar, public-house potmen," said she, with an
access of indignation which surprised me. "To think that you, with a
nice mother like yours, should come up here a fright like that! There,
put the shoes and hat in the trunk with the speckled waistcoat and
shirts, and get yourself up decently, and then I'll speak to you."

I was under the impression she _had_ spoken to me--pretty strongly too.
This, then, was the end of my elaborately prepared toilet!

A horrid suspicion began to come over me at last, not only that Tempest
had been having a little joke at my expense, but that I had lent myself
to it with an alacrity and eagerness which had almost--nay, very nearly
wholly--been ridiculous.

What does the reader think?

My further conversation with good Mrs Smiley, after I had, to use her
own expression, made myself decent, only tended to confirm the painful
impression. I even went to the length of adding, of my own accord, my
six-button lavender gloves to the pile of sacrificed finery which
strewed the bottom of my trunk. And when in due time a bell rang, and
Mrs Smiley said, "There now, go down to call-over, and don't be a silly
any more," I obeyed with a meekness and diffidence of which I could
hardly have believed myself capable, had I not been quite sure of the
fact.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

TEMPEST TALKS TO ME LIKE A FATHER.

As I entered the hall, in which were already assembled most of my fellow
"Sharpers," the first idea which occurred to me was that Low Heath was
not such a big place after all. I had expected to encounter the whole
school, instead of some fifty boys of my own particular house, and it
was a relief to me to find that, for the present at any rate, I was to
blush before only a limited company.

The next thing that struck me was that these fellows evinced wonderfully
little interest in my appearance; which, considering the active interest
they had shown in me not long since, was quite a shock. I had made up
my mind to be howled at and laughed out of countenance. Instead of
which they co