was worth any quantity of bookish theoretic; as for me, I was
going on my travels, and imports and exports, populations and
capitals, might very well wait while I explored the breathing,
coloured world outside.

True, a fellow-rebel was wanted; and Harold might, as a rule,
have been counted on with certainty. But just then Harold was
very proud. The week before he had "gone into tables," and had
been endowed with a new slate, having a miniature sponge
attached, wherewith we washed the faces of Charlotte's dolls,
thereby producing an unhealthy pallor which struck terror into
the child's heart, always timorous regarding epidemic
visitations. As to "tables," nobody knew exactly what they
were, least of all Harold; but it was a step over the heads of
the rest, and therefore a subject for self-adulation and--
generally speaking--airs; so that Harold, hugging his slate and
his chains, was out of the question now. In such a matter, girls
were worse than useless, as wanting the necessary tenacity of
will and contempt for self-constituted authority. So eventually
I slipped through the hedge a solitary protestant, and issued
forth on the lane what time the rest of the civilised world was
sitting down to lessons.

The scene was familiar enough; and yet, this morning, how
different it all seemed! The act, with its daring, tinted
everything with new, strange hues; affecting the individual with
a sort of bruised feeling just below the pit of the stomach, that
was intensified whenever his thoughts flew back to the ink-
stained, smelly schoolroom. And could this be really me? or was
I only contemplating, from the schoolroom aforesaid, some other