"I'll lick you, Flip, after school," said the wrathful Bliss, shaking his fist, as Henderson began to whisper to him this monody. "Why do they call you Flip?" asked Walter laughing. "Short for Flibberty-gibbet," said Bliss. "Bliss, Henderson, and Evson, do me two hundred lines each," said Mr Paton; and so on this, his first morning in school, a second punishment was entered against Walter's name. "Whew-w-w... abomination of... spoken of by... hush!" was Henderson's whispered comment. "I call that hard lines." But he continued his "Lament for Blissidas" notwithstanding, introducing Saint Winifred and other mourners over Bliss's fate, and ending with the admonition that in writing the lines he was-- "To touch the tender tops of various quills, And mind and dot his quaint enamelled i's." When Walter asked his tutor for the paper on which to write his punishment, Mr Robertson said to him, "Already, Evson!" in a tone of displeasure, and with a sarcasm hardly inferior to that of Talleyrand's celebrated "Deja." "Two hundred lines and a lesson to write out _already_!" Bitter; with no sign of sympathy, without one word of inquiry, of encouragement for the future, or warning about the past; no advice given, no interest shown; no wonder that Walter never got on with his tutor. The days that began for Walter from this time were days of darkness and disappointment. He was not deficient in natural ability, but he had undergone no special training for Saint Winifred's School, and consequently many things were new to him in which other boys had been previously trained. The practice of learning grammar by means of Latin rules was particularly trying to him. He could have easily mastered the facts which the rules were intended to impress, but the empirical process suggested for arriving at the facts he could not remember, even if he could have construed the crabbed Latin in which it was conveyed. His father, too, had never greatly cultivated his powers of memory, and hence he felt serious difficulty at first with the long lessons that had to be learnt by heart. Mr Paton's system was simply this. If a boy failed in a lesson from any mundane cause whatever, he had to write it out; if he failed to bring it written out, he had to write it twice; if he was turned in a second lesson he was sent to detention, _i.e._, he was kept in during play hours; if this process was long-continued he was sent to the headmaster in disgrace, and ran the chance of being flogged as an incorrigible idler. Mr Paton, who was devoted to a system, made no allowance for difference of ability, or for idiosyncrasies of temperament; he was a truly good man, at bottom a really kind-hearted man, and a genuine Christian; but the system which he had adopted was his "idol of the cave," and, as we said before, the _Kavwv molubdinos_ was unknown to him.