The superintendent boasted that his "turn-over" ran to more than five
hundred children a year. But there was distinction about Clem, and
people remembered him.

"You 'ear, now," he said, looking round with a veteran's contempt upon
the squad of recruits in pauperism, "if none on yer don't break out with
somethink before the week's over, I'll flay the lot. I'm not pertikler
for what it is. Last time it was measles first, and then ringworm. Nigh
on seven weeks I stopt 'ere with nothink to do only eat, and never got
so much as a smell of the school. What's them teachers got to learn
_me_, I'd like to know?"

He paused with rhetorical defiance, but as no one answered he proceeded
to express the teachers and officers in terms of unmentionable
quantities. Suddenly he turned upon a big, vacant-looking boy at his
side.

"What's yer name, fat-'ead?" he asked.

The boy backed away a pace or two, and stood gently moving his head
about, and staring with his large pale eyes, as a calf stares at a dog.

"Speak, you dyin' oyster!" said Clem, kicking his shins.

"Ernest," said the boy, with a sudden gasp, turning fiery red and
twisting his fingers into knots.

"Ernest what?" said Clem. "But it don't matter, for your sort always
belongs to the fine old family of Looney. You're a deal too good for the
likes of us. Why, you ought to 'ave a private asylum all to yerself. Hi,