this grove of Academus had been shedding its leaves overnight. When he
reached his own desk he lifted the lid and remained for some moments
motionless, gazing into it. His apparent meditation however was simply
the combined reflection of his own features in a small pocket-mirror in
its recesses and a perplexing doubt in his mind whether the sacrifice of
his budding moustache was not essential to the professional austerity
of his countenance. But he was presently aware of the sound of small
voices, light cries, and brief laughter scattered at vague and remote
distances from the schoolhouse--not unlike the birds and squirrels he
had just dispossessed. He recognized by these signs that it was nine
o'clock, and his scholars were assembling.

They came in their usual desultory fashion--the fashion of country
school-children the world over--irregularly, spasmodically, and always
as if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or
dropped behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less
coherent and at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices
scattered on a space of half a mile, but never quite alone; always
preoccupied by something else than the actual business on hand;
appearing suddenly from ditches, behind trunks, and between fence-rails;
cropping up in unexpected places along the road after vague and
purposeless detours--seemingly going anywhere and everywhere but to
school! So unlooked-for, in fact, was their final arrival that the
master, who had a few moments before failed to descry a single torn
straw hat or ruined sun-bonnet above his visible horizon, was always
startled to find them suddenly under his windows, as if, like the birds,
they had alighted from the trees. Nor was their moral attitude towards
their duty any the more varied; they always arrived as if tired and
reluctant, with a doubting sulkiness that perhaps afterwards beamed into
a charming hypocrisy, but invariably temporizing with their instincts