ed, and others with the water-drops still
dangling from their hastily combed hair. He saw Tracy saunter in very
neat, but with a languid air of disapprobation, blushing withal as he
entered; Eden, whose large eyes looked bewildered until he caught sight
of Walter and sat down beside him; Kenrick, beaming as ever, who nodded
to him as he passed by; Henderson, who, notwithstanding the time and
place, found opportunity to whisper to him a hope that he had washed his
desirable person in clear water; Plumber looking as if his credulity had
been gorged beyond endurance; Daubeny, with eyes immovably fixed in the
determination to know his lessons that day; and lastly, Harpour, who had
just time to scuffle in hot, breathless, and exceedingly untidy, as the
chaplain began the opening sentence.

"Where am I to go now?" asked Eden, when chapel was over.

"Well, Eden, I know as little as you. You'd better ask your tutor.
Here, Kenrick," said Walter, "which of those black gowns is Mr
Robertson?--this fellow's tutor and mine."

Kenrick pointed out one of the masters, to whom Eden went; and then
Walter asked, "Where am I to go to Mr Paton's form?"

"Here, let me lead the victim to the sacrifice," said Henderson. "O for
a wreath of cypress or funeral yew, or--"

"Nettles?" suggested Kenrick.

"Observe, new boy," said Henderson, "your eternal friend's delicate
insinuation that you are a donkey. Here, come with me and I'll take you
to be patted on." Henderson's exuberant spirits prevented his ever
speaking without giving vent to slang, bad puns, or sheer good-humoured
nonsense.

"Aren't you in that form, Kenrick?" asked Walter, as he saw him
diverging to the right.

"Oh no! dear me, no!" said Henderson. "_I_ am, but the eternal friend
is at least two forms higher; he, let me tell you, is a star of no
ordinary magnitude; he's in the Thicksides"--meaning the Thucydides'
class. "You'll require no end of sky-climbing before you reach _his_
altitude. And now, victim, behold your sacrificial priest," he said,
placing Walter at the end of a table among some thirty boys who were
seated in front of a master's desk in the large schoolroom, in various
parts of which other forms were also beginning work under similar
superintendence. When all the forms were saying lessons at the same
time it may be imagined that the room was not very still, and that a
master required good lungs who had to teach and talk there for hours.

Not that