On Monday morning I went to school. I arrived half an hour before the proper time, and as my classes had already been arranged, I had nothing to do but loiter about and take stock of the place. It stood, a long, low, unlovely building of soot-darkened brick, in its own grounds, not far from the centre of the town. Just now, on this gray autumn morning, it presented an appearance of singular, of almost jail-like dullness, though in summer, as I was to learn, when the grass was green, and the tall dusty elms waved against a blue sky, and the sun shone through narrow, small-paned windows, and splashed on wooden floors, on hacked wooden desks and forms, on faded maps, and bare, discoloured walls, it could be pleasant enough, in spite of the complete absence of anything save the sunlight and the trees that might appeal to a sense of beauty. Beside the main building was a Preparatory School, and at the back, separated from it by a yard, where a score or so of boys were at present kicking about a football, were the Mathematical Schools, and beyond these, the larger playing-field. It was really a day-school, only two masters living on the premises, with about a couple of dozen boarders: the rest of the scholars, numbering between a hundred and fifty and two hundred, were day-boys. As I hung about uneasily, not venturing to join the others, I was painfully conscious of my isolation. Not one of those faces had I ever seen before, nor had I the slightest knowledge of the school itself, for George, who had been at a National School, could tell me nothing about it. Nobody took any notice of me. Several masters passed, and disappeared through mysterious doors, and when, at ten o’clock, a white-haired, white-bearded patriarch rang a huge hand-bell in the porch, and I watched the boys scattering with extraordinary rapidity in various directions, it looked to me as if I might very easily spend my whole day in the yard. I had no idea which door to try, yet at the same time I was anxious not to be late. I was still hovering uncertainly about the porch, like a soul strayed into the wrong Paradise, when a boy, running past, glanced at me, stopped, and asked me where I wanted to go to. I told him I wanted to go to Mr. Lowden’s class. “It’s the end door on the left over there,” he said, good-humouredly, and I thanked him and hurried off. Coming in, I found the whole class already in their places, but a boy at the end of the third form moved up to make room for me, and I sat down. Mr. Lowden, who was standing, with a piece of chalk in one hand and a duster in the other, close by the black-board, asked me my name, and then informed me I was late and that he objected to lateness. I said nothing, but took down on the slate in front of me the sum he had just written out. I worked at it, and was struck by the animated conversations that were going on all over the room, in spite of Mr. Lowden’s efforts to check them.