“His new dicky-birds.” “Must have names. Yes. Yes. Must have names. Dick and Tom. Dick and Tom.” “But one’s a girl,” Michael objected. “Can’t be changed now. Must be Dick and Tom,” Nurse settled, blowing rapidly as usual. The decision worried Michael considerably, but as they both turned out to be hens and laid twenty-three eggs between them next spring, it ceased to bother him any more. The Miss Marrows’ School and Kindergarten, kept by Miss Marrow and Miss Caroline Marrow assisted by Miss Hewitt and Miss Hunt, struck Michael as a very solemn establishment indeed. Although its outward appearance was merely that of an ordinary house somewhat larger than others on account of its situation at the corner of Fairfax Terrace, it contained inside a variety of scholastic furniture that was bound to impress the novice. At twenty minutes past nine on the first day of the autumn term, Nurse and Michael stood before a brass plate inscribed The Misses Marrow School and Kindergarten while a bell still jangled with the news of their arrival. They were immediately shown into a very small and very stuffy room on the right of the front door—a gloomy little room, because blinds of coloured beads shut out the unscholastic world. This room was uncomfortably crowded with little girls taking off goloshes and unlacing long brown boots, with little boys squabbling over their indoor shoes, with little girls chatting and giggling and pushing and bumping, with little boys shouting and quarrelling and kicking and pulling. A huddled and heated knot of nurses and nursemaids tried to help their charges, while every minute more little boys and more little girls and more bigger girls pushed their way in and made the confusion worse. In the middle of the uproar Miss Marrow herself entered and the noise was instantly lulled. “The new boys will wait in here and the new girls will _quietly_ follow Helen Hungerford down the passage to Miss Caroline’s room. Nurses need not wait any longer.” Then a bell vibrated shrilly. There was a general scamper as the nurses and the nursemaids and the old boys and the old girls hurried from the room, leaving Michael and two other boys, both about two years older than himself, to survey each other with suspicion. The other boys finding Michael beneath the dignity of their notice spoke to each other, or rather the larger of the two, a long-bodied boy with a big head and vacant mouth, said to the other, a fidgety boy with a pink face, a frog-like smile and very tight knickerbockers: “I say, what’s your name?” The pink-faced boy gulped “Edward Ernest Arnott.” “What is it then?” asked the long-bodied boy. “Arnott is my surname. Edward and Ernest,” he gulped again, “are my Christian names.” “Mine’s Vernon Brown. I say, what’s your father?”