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“How would you like to be a College boy, Jabez, and wear a long blue coat, like that fellow yonder” (pointing to a boy then crossing the market on an errand), “and learn to write and cipher, as well as to read?”

“If you please’n, aw’d loike it moore nor eawt.” And his animated face was a clearer answer than his words.

Joshua then read the lad a brief homily to the effect that only good and honourable boys could find admission, winding up with—

“If you’re a very good lad, I’ll see what can be done for you.”

He interrupted thanks with—

“Easter’s very near, Sim, so you’ll have to stir your stumps to prove that our honourable young friend came honourably into the world. I’ll get the forms and fill them up for you, and his baptismal register too.”

He snatched up his books and was off, the tassel of his collegiate cap and the cassock he wore flying loose as he hurried away muttering to himself—

“What an old fool I am to bother about the lad! I daresay he’ll turn round and sting me in the end, like the rest of the snakes I have warmed. As great an idiot as old dame Clowes!”