Affairs had been going on in a cross-grained sort of manner all day. The school, taking it as a whole, had been inattentive; Mr. Pye had been severe; the second master had caned a whole desk, and threatened another, and double lessons had been set the upper boys for the following morning. Altogether, when the gentlemen were released at five o’clock, they were not in the sweetest of tempers, and entered upon a wordy war in the cloisters. “What possessed you to take and tear up that paper you were surreptitiously scribbling at, when Pye ordered you to go up and hand it in?” demanded Gaunt, of George Brittle. “It was that which put him out with us all. Was it a love-letter?” “Who was to think he’d go and ask for it?” returned Brittle, an indifferent sort of gentleman, who liked to take things easily. “Guess what it was.” “Don’t talk to me about guessing!” imperiously spoke Gaunt. “I ask you what it was?” “Nothing less than the memorial to himself,” laughed Brittle. “Some of us made a rough shell of it, and I thought I’d set on and copy it fair. When old Pye’s voice came thundering, ‘What’s that you are so stealthily busy over, Mr. Brittle?--hand it in,’ of course I could only tear it into minute pieces, and pretend to be deaf.” “You had best not try it on again,” said Gaunt. “Nothing puts out Pye like disobeying him to his face.” “Oh, doesn’t it, though!” returned Brittle. “Cribs put him out the worst. He thought that was a crib, or he’d not have been so eager for it.” “What sort of a shell is it?” asked Harry Huntley. “Who drew it out?” “It won’t do at all,” interposed Hurst. “The head of it is, ‘Revered master,’ and the tail, ‘Yours affectionately.’” A shout of laughter; Brittle’s voice rose above the noise. “And the middle is an eloquent piece of composition, calculated to take the master’s obdurate heart by storm, and move it to redress our wrongs.” “We have no wrongs to redress of that sort,” cried Gerald Yorke. “Being an interested party, you ought to keep your mouth shut,” called out Hurst to Yorke. “Keep yours shut first,” retorted Yorke to Hurst. “Not being interested, there’s no need to open yours at all.” “Let’s see the thing,” said Huntley. Brittle drew from his pocket a sheet of a copy-book, tumbled, blotted, scribbled over with the elegance that only a schoolboy can display. Several heads had been laid together, and a sketch of the memorial drawn out between them. Shorn of what Hurst had figuratively called the head and tail, and which had been added for nonsense, it was not a bad production. The boys clustered round Brittle, looking over his shoulder, as he read the composition aloud for the benefit of those who could not elbow space to see. “It wouldn’t be bad,” said Huntley, critically, “if it were done into good grammar.” “Into what?” roared Brittle. “The grammar’s as good as you can produce any day, Huntley. Come!” “I’ll correct it for you,” said Huntley, coolly. “There are a dozen faults in it.”