sixteen years old, in a word, when he was suddenly called away from his
academic studies.

It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on
to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little
Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had
made a sad blunder or two when the awful Chief broke out upon him.

"Pendennis, sir," he said, "your idleness is incorrigible and your
stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your
family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country.
If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be
really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the
correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future
crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable
trifler! A boy who construes de and, instead of de but, at sixteen years
of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and dulness
inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of filial ingratitude,
which I tremble to contemplate. A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek
play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who
cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his
neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his
crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity (for he will
be deservedly cut off), but his maddened and heart-broken parents, who
are driven to a premature grave by his crimes, or, if they live, drag on
a wretched and dishonoured old age. Go on, sir, and I warn you that the
very next mistake that you make shall subject you to the punishment of
the rod. Who's that laughing? What ill-conditioned boy is there that
dares to laugh?" shouted the Doctor.