So saying, the vicar beat a retreat, and as Edward John watched the breeze-blown frock-coat and the twinkling calipers disappear eastward, he cherished the suspicion that the Rev. Godfrey Needham really did not know so much of Latin after all. Nor did the shrewd Mr. Charles arrive at a wrong conclusion. The dear old vicar's reputation as a Latinist rested almost entirely on the fact that it was his custom when showing a visitor through the Parish Church of Hampton Bagot to point to several memorials in the chancel, and after asking if the visitor knew Latin, to glibly recite the inscriptions in that tongue, and follow this up by condescending to give their English equivalents. It was a harmless vanity, and was typical of many little corners in the quaint character of this good man. Miffin had now accomplished the elaborate ceremony of opening his inefficient shop, and sniffing contemptuously as he retired indoors at the presumptuous Mr. Charles, whose encounter with the vicar he had carefully overheard, he had the satisfaction of seeing the portly form of Edward John disappear inside the Post Office, presumably for the purpose of doing a little business. "And now, 'Enry," said the proud parent, still chuckling at the obvious retreat of the vicar, "it is time for school, my boy. Remember, _tempus fugits_. Yes, my word, _tempus_ do _fugit_." Thus admonished, the rising hope of the postmaster shouldered his satchel and set out schoolward. Henry Charles was in almost every sense a direct contrast to his father. Taller than the latter already, although not yet sixteen years of age, he was lean and sallow of appearance, with long, narrow, ungainly features, redeemed from plainness only by the intensity of his glowing brown eyes. By several years the oldest lad at the church school, where Mr. Arnold Page retailed his somewhat limited store of learning to some forty scholars, Henry was the scandal of the village. To the good folk of Hampton it seemed almost a temptation of Providence to keep a lad at school after he was twelve years of age, and to them Henry was a byword for laziness and the possibilities of a shameful end. Often would the postmaster's cronies assure him that he could hope for no good to come of such conduct. At the "Wings and Spur" almost any evening "that long, lanky, lumbering lout of a good-for-nothing, 'Enry Charles," was quoted in conversation as an example of the follies a man could commit who had once gone so far out of his natural station as to visit London and admire "book-larnin'." "It's downright sinful, I calls it, to keep a led at school arter twelve years of age, when 'e moite be earnin' three shillin' a week a-doin' of some honest werk." This was the opinion enunciated more than once by Mr. Miffin in the taproom of the inn, and always assented to with acclamation by the company.