So his father waved his shovel-hat from the window and David his straw hat from the platform, after which he twitched off the paper vendor’s cap and rubbed his face upwards with it, and hit him on the hands so that he dropped all his papers and strolled back to school again in the highest spirits. And not only were his spirits high, but, for the first time in his life, he was conscious of how happy he was, instead of just being happy. This morning he seemed to stand away from himself and envy the boy (only it was himself) who was going to try for a Marchester scholarship next week, and was certainly going there in September, and had five shillings and two stag-beetles in his pocket, and was in the school eleven. Child though he was, consciousness of self had come to him: he knew that his head was full of delightful plans, that his limbs were taut and strong, that he was set in the enchanted garden of the world. He said, “By Gosh!” and saluted the discovery by kicking an empty tobacco-tin that lay in the road with such firm accuracy that it flew with a whirring, gong-like sound over the fence of the house where the assistant masters of the school lodged, and David thought it wise to go swiftly away, and not look behind. He dropped to a sober pace again after putting a corner between himself and the masters’ house into the garden of which the empty tin had so pleasantly flown, and from mere happiness made a quantity of good resolutions, one of which he immediately put into effect by not going into the tobacco-shop where he had originally intended to buy a packet of cigarettes as a present for the Smoking Club. Just now the solid satisfaction of life rendered unnecessary such minor adjuncts, and, since he did not like smoking, it was convenient that it happened to be contrary to school rules. There were such hosts of things pleasant and not against school rules, that he wished, by way of a thank-offering for them, to resolve on a virtuous life. He really would get up at the sound of the first bell in the morning for the future, he would not smoke any more, he would not look up the answers to sums before he wrestled with them, nor copy out on his shirt-cuff the principal rivers of Russia. They were there now in fact, and in this sudden access of being good because he was happy, he stopped then and there, and, with a piece of india-rubber, expunged the Volga and the Vistula and the Don and the Dnieper. And, as if to reward him, just as he got to the school-gate eleven o’clock sounded, which meant that Latin prose repetition was over, and since to-day was a half-holiday, there was only one more hour of school, and that was English literature, the one lesson of the week which he actively enjoyed, and, though the Head usually took it, was not in the least terrifying. He asked but few questions, or sometimes there were no questions at all, but he would read to them a poem, with explanations of difficult words or sentences, so that any one could