"Go to your seat at once! The impudence of this class is insufferable!" Loud murmurs of dissent from twenty boys greeted this aspersion. The class resolved itself into an Opposition, inspired by one object, which was to repudiate aspersions. Penny excellently voiced their resentment. "Oh, _sir_." (Opposition cheers.) Mr. Caesar hurled his chair behind him, and approached very close to Penny. "Will you go to your seat at once?" Penny, with all his power, was still a boy; and for a moment the child in him flinched before the exceedingly close approach of Mr. Caesar. But the next minute he looked up at the still open window; shivered, and shuddered; rubbed his cold hands (this beautiful summer morning); buttoned himself up warmly; went to the master's desk for his books; dropped them one after another; blew on his numbed fingers to infuse a little warmth into them, contriving a whistle, and all the time looking most rebukingly at his tyrannical master; picked up four books and dropped two of them; picked up those and dropped one more; walked to his seat in high sorrow, and banged the whole lot of the books down upon the desk and floor in an appalling cataract, as the full cruelty of Mr. Caesar's treatment came suddenly home to him. When we recovered from this shattering explosion of Penny's books, a little quiet work would have begun, had not Doe, with his romantic imagination lit by the glow of Penny's audacity, started to crave the notoriety of being likewise a leader of men. He rose from his desk, approached Mr. Caesar, and extended his hand with a belated "Good morning, sir." Poor Mr. Caesar, in the kindliness of his heart, was touched by Doe's graceful action, and grasped the proffered hand, saying: "Good morning, Doe." By this time the whole class was arranged in a tolerably straight line behind Doe, and waiting to go through the ceremony of shaking hands. Work commenced at about twenty minutes to twelve, and, when twelve should come, we were to render, according to programme, "God Save the King," with some delicate humming. For want of something better to do, I wrote a clause of the exercise set. Mr. Caesar's back was now turned and he was studying a wall-map. "Shall I?" "Yes, rather!" These two whispered sentences I heard from behind me. Inquisitively I turned round to see what simmered there. "Keep working, you fool!" hissed my neighbour.