"All right!" he remarked cheerfully. "Not in sight yet--only Wilkes and Jordan. There's the Badger now. What cheer, Badger, old man?" (The Badger was the Senior Science Master.) The form gave no sign, though Brown minor and Pip were exhibiting symptoms of incipient apoplexy; and Mr. Hanbury came to the conclusion that this comedy had better cease. But the luckless Mumford, his eye still firmly adhering to the keyhole, continued,-- "Hallo! there's the Head. Hope he meets some of those chaps. Very slack, their not goin' to their classrooms till five minutes past the hour. Wonder where Ham is. Downstairs, I expect, cadging beer off the butler. He'll probably be tight when he--" At this point, flattered by the deferential silence with which his remarks were being received, and desirous of observing the effect of this last sally on his fellows, the doomed youth turned from the keyhole to the room. The first object which met his eye was his form-master. The effect was remarkable. Mumford's eyes, already bulging from long straining at the keyhole, nearly fell from his head; he turned deadly pale; and finally, with a whoop of terror, he dashed from the room, never stopping till he reached the seclusion of his study in his tutor's house. He was not punished, for Ham knew well that no further penalty was required. The Lower Shell, however, unanimously voted Mumford "an abject blighter," and restored Pip to his old post. Nearly a year passed. Pip was now fifteen. He had stayed at the preparatory school for a year longer than most boys, owing to an attack of mumps; but his appearance was so youthful and his mental abilities so limited, that he might easily have passed, as his friend Mumford frequently remarked, for twelve. Mr. Hanbury was not often puzzled by a boy's brain, but in Pip's case he had to admit himself baffled. "I can't make the boy out," he said to his colleague, the Reverend William Mortimer (usually called "Uncle Bill"), who was Pip's house-tutor. "He has a wonderful memory, but is either unable or unwilling to think. He prefers to learn a page of easy history by heart, and repeat it like a parrot, rather than read it through and give me the substance of it in his own words."