"Brownlow Major, of course; and here's French, who says it was a new
sort of cow invented by Henry VIII.-—a happy feminine, I suppose, to
the Papal Bull. Here's a third! The French fleet defeated by Queen
Elizabeth. Most have passed it over entirely."

"Well, you know this is the first time you have tried such an
examination, and boys never do learn history."

"Nor anything else in this happy town," was the answer, accompanied
by a ruffling over of the papers.

"For shame, David! The first day of the term!"

"It is the dead weight of Brownlows, my dear. Only think! There's
another lot coming! A set of duplicates. They haven't even the
sense to vary the Christian names. Three more to be admitted to-
morrow."

"That accounts for a good deal!"

"You are laughing at me, Mary; but did you never know what it is to
feel like Sisyphus? Whenever you think you have rolled it a little
way, down it comes, a regular dead weight again, down the slope of
utter indifference and dulness, till it seems to crush the very heart
out of you !"

"Have you really nobody that is hopeful?"

"Nobody who does not regard me as his worst enemy, and treat all my