In those days when a Blue-coat boy tried to run away he was shut up in a little dark cell like a prison cell, and had only bread and water given to him, and saw no one and spoke to no one, and twice a week he was taken out and flogged. It was no wonder the boys wanted to run away, for the place was very wretched, and in the great dining-hall there were swarms of rats that came out at night to pick up the crumbs, and the boys used to go and catch them for fun, not in traps, but in their hands. I don't think girls would ever have liked that game, and there must have been some nasty bites and scratches sometimes. A very small boy was crying one day when he came back to the school after the holidays, and a master said to him: 'Boy, the school is your father; boy, the school is your mother; boy, the school is your brother, the school is your sister, your first cousin, your second cousin, and all the rest of your relations.' I don't suppose it made that boy feel any better. It is very different now, and the boys are very happy, and a great many clever men have been taught at that school, but in those early days it cannot have been very comfortable. But this is enough about the Blue-coat School. In one school the boys play on the roof, because they have no playground. This is in the City, near the great big cathedral of St. Paul's, and there is no room for playgrounds there; the land is too valuable, and is wanted for houses and streets. The school is for the choir-boys of the cathedral, who sing more beautifully than any other boys in the world. And if you were walking past the school you might suddenly hear a lovely voice rising higher and higher and higher, like a skylark or a nightingale, and this would be one of the boys practising his notes. The school is large and the roof is flat, and all over the top and at the sides are high railings filled in with wire, so that the balls at cricket or football can't jump over the edge and come down on the heads of the people walking in the street below. That would be a surprise, wouldn't it? to have a great football drop out of the sky on to your head. It is a funny idea, playing up there among the chimneys and the roofs, and I don't think it can be very clean; I expect the boys have always to wash their hands before they put on their pure white surplices and go into the great solemn cathedral to sing. There is going to be a chapter in this book telling something about the cathedral of St. Paul's, so you will remember this about the choir-boys when you come to it. CHAPTER VI LONDON MARKETS