must have everybody must have i returned h thank you master said for that remark it is so true as i am i know it is so true i oh thank you master he himself quite off his stool in the excitement of his feelings and being off began to make arrangements for going home mother will be expecting me he said referring to a pale faced watch in his pocket and getting uneasy for though we are very master we are much attached to one another if you would come and see us any afternoon and take a cup of tea at our lowly dwelling mother would be as proud of your company as i should be i said i should be glad to come thank you master returned putting his took away upon a shelf � i suppose you stop here some time master i said i w as going to be brought up there i believed as long as i remained at school oh indeed exclaimed i should think i ou would come into the business at last master i protested that i had no views of that sort and that no such scheme was entertained in my behalf by anybody but insisted on replying to all my assurances oh yes master i should think you would indeed and oh indeed master i should think you would certainly over and over again being at last ready to leave the office for the night he asked me if it would suit my convenience to have the light put out and on my answering yes instantly extinguished it after shaking hands with me � his hand felt like a fish in the dark � he opened the door into the street a very little and crept out and shut it leaving me to my way back into the house which cost me some trouble and a fall over his stool this was the cause i suppose of my di about him for what appeared to me to be half the night and dreaming among other things that he had launched mr s house on a expedition with a black flag at the mast head bearing the inscription s practice under which he was carrying me and little em ly to the spanish main to be drowned i got a little the better of my uneasiness when i went to school next day and a good deal the better next day and so shook it off by degrees that in less than a fortnight i was quite at home and happy among my new companions i was awkward enough in their games and backward enough in their studies but custom would improve me in the first respect i hoped op david and hard work in the second accordingly i went to work very hard both in play and in earnest and gained great and in a very little while the and life became so strange to me that i hardly believed in it while my present life grew so familiar that i seemed to have been leading it a long time doctor strong s was an school as different from mr s as good is from evil it was very gravely and ordered and on a sound system with an appeal in everything to the honour and good faith of the boys and an intention to rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it which worked wonders we all felt that we had a part in the management of the place and in its character and dignity hence we soon became warmly attached to it � i am sure i did for one and i never knew in all my time of any other boy being otherwise � and learnt with a good will desiring to do it credit we had noble games out of hours and plenty of liberty but even then as i remember we were well spoken of in the town and rarely did any disgrace by our appearance or manner to the reputation of doctor strong and doctor strong s boys some of the higher scholars in the doctor s house and through them i learnt at second hand some particulars of the doctor s history � as how he had not yet been married twelve months to the beautiful young lady i had seen in the study whom he had married for love as she had not a sixpence and had a world of poor relations so our fellows said ready to swarm the doctor out of house and home also how the doctor s manner was to his being always engaged in looking out for greek roots which in my innocence and ignorance t supposed to be a on the doctor s part especially as he always looked at the ground when he walked about � until i understood that they were roots of words with a view to a new dictionary which he had in contemplation our head boy who had a turn for had made a calculation i was informed of the time this dictionary would take in on the doctor s plan and at the doctor s rate of going he considered that it might be done in one thousand six hundred and forty nine years counting from the doctor s last or sixty second birthday the doctor himself was the idol of the whole school and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else for he was the kindest of men with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very upon the wall as he walked up and down that part of the court yard which was at the side of the house with the stray and looking after him with their heads cocked as if they knew how much more knowing they were in worldly affairs than he if any 