I burst into tears. I needed no voice to tell me that I was the person to alight. I knew my doom. Farewell to all my glorious visions! I could have hurled back into the face of the laughing sun, my hate, and called him deceiver and traitor; for had he not, with other causes conspired to smile me, five minutes ago, into a fool's paradise? "Master Rattlin, won't you please to alight?" said one of those under-toned, gerund-singing voices, that my instinct told me to be an usher's. "No, thank'ee, sir," said I, amidst my sobbings, "I want to go home." "But you are to get down here, however," said my evil-omened inviter. "Your boxes are all off the coach, and the coachman wants to go forward." "So do I." "It's excessively droll this--hi, hi, hi as sure as my name's Saltseller, it is excessively droll. So you want to get forward, Master Rattlin? why come to school then, that's the way--droll, isn't it? Why, you've been riding backwards all the way, too--time to change--droll that--hi, hi!" "It's no change," said I, getting out, sulkily, "from one school to another--and do you call this a school?" I continued, looking round contemptuously, for I found about twenty little boys playing upon a green knoll before the house, and over which we were compelled to walk to reach it, as the road did not come near the habitation. "Do you call this a school? Well, if you catch me being flogged here, I'm a sop, that's all--a school! And I suppose you're the usher--I don't think those little boys bumped you last half-year." "I don't think they did," said Mr Saltseller, which was actually the wretch's name, and with whom I fell desperately in hate at first sight. "Bump me!" he exclaimed soliloquising--and with that air of astonishment, as if he had heard the most monstrous impossibility spoken of imaginable. "Bump me? droll, isn't it--excessively? Where have you been brought up, Master Rattlin?" "Where they bar out tyrannical masters, and bump sneaking ushers," said I. "That's where I was brought up." "Then that's what I call very bad bringing up." "Not so bad as being brought down here, anyhow." His next "excessively droll, isn't it?" brought us to the door of the academy; but, in passing over the play-ground, I could see, at once, that I was with quite another class of beings than those who composed my late school-fellows. They were evidently more delicately nurtured; they had not the air of schoolboy daring to which I had been so much accustomed, and they called each other "Master." Everything, too, seemed to be upon a miniature scale. The house was much smaller, yet there was an air of comfort and of health around, that at first I did not appreciate, though I could not help remarking it. No sooner was I conducted into the passage, than I heard a voice which I thought I remembered, exclaim, "Show Master Rattlin in here, and shut the door."