il completely every now and then,
and be reproached for it by some master who little knew the hours of
weary work which he had devoted to the unsuccessful attempt. This was
particularly the case during his first half-year, during which he had
been in Mr Robertson's form. It happened that, from the very weariness
of brain induced by his working too hard, he had failed in several
successive lessons, and Mr Robertson, who was a man of quick temper and
stinging speech, had made some very cutting remarks upon him, and sent
him, moreover, to detention--a punishment which caused to his sensitive
mind a pain hardly less acute than the master's pungent and undeserved
sarcasm. This mishap, joined to his low weekly placing, very nearly
filled him with despair, and this day might have turned the scale, and
fixed him in the position of a heavy and disheartened boy, but for
Power, who had come to Saint Winifred's at the same time with Daubeny,
and who, although in his unusually rapid progress he had long left
Daubeny behind, was then in the same form and the same dormitory with
him, and knew how he worked. Power used always to say to his friends
that Dubbs was the worthiest, the bravest, the most upright and
conscientious boy in all Saint Winifred's school. Daubeny, on the other
hand, had for Power the kind of adoration of the savage for the sun; he
was the boy's beau-ideal of a perfect scholar and a perfect being.--It
was a curious sight to see the two boys together Power with his fine and
thoughtful face beaming with intelligence, Dubbs with large, heavy
features and awkward gait; Power sitting down with his book and
perfectly mastering the lesson in a quarter of an hour, and then turning
round to say, with a bright arch look, "Well, Dubbs, I've learnt the
lesson; how far are you?"

"Learnt the lesson? O, lucky fellow. I only know one stanza and that
not perfectly; let me see--`Nam quid Typhoeus et validus Mimas nam
quid'--no; I don't know even that, I see."

"Here, let me hear you."

Whereupon Dubbs would begin again, and flounder hopelessly at the end of
the third line, and then Power would continue it all through with him,
fix the sense of it in his memory, read it over, suggest little mnemonic
dodges and associations of particular words and lines, and not leave him
until he knew it by heart, and was ready with gratitude enough to pluck
out his right eye and give it to Power, if needed, there and then.

The early fail