The three weeks of Christmas holiday darted past only too rapidly for most of the boys at Saint Dominic's. Holidays have a miserable knack of sliding along. The first few days seem delightfully long. Then, after the first week, the middle all of a sudden becomes painfully near. And the middle once passed, they simply tear, and bolt, and rush pitilessly on to the end, when, lo and behold! your time is up before you well knew it had begun. So it happened with most of the boys. With one or two, however, the holiday dragged heavily, and one of these was Master Thomas Senior. This forlorn youth, no longer now rollicking Tom of the Fifth, but the meek and mild, and withal sulky, hopeful of the Reverend Thomas Senior, D.D., of Saint Dominic's, watched the last of his chums go off with anything but glee. He was doomed to three weeks' kicking of his heels in the empty halls and playgrounds of Saint Dominic's, with nothing to do and no one to do it with. For the boy's mother was ill, which kept the whole family at home, and Tom's baby brother, vivacious youth as he was, was hardly of a companionable age yet. As to the Doctor (Tom, by the way, even in the bosom of his family, always thought and talked of his father as the "Doctor")--as for the Doctor, well, Tom was inclined to shirk the risk of more _tete-a-tetes_ than he could possibly help with so formidable a personage, even though he _was_ his own parent. But try all he could, Tom was let in for it once, when he found himself face to face one day at dinner with the Doctor, and no third person to help him out. The occasion was quite early in the holidays, and was indeed about the first opportunity the father had had since breaking-up for anything like a conversation with his affable son. Tom's conversational powers were never very brilliant, and when in the subduing presence of his father they always dwindled down to nothing. It was, therefore, somewhat difficult, under the circumstances, to keep the talk going, but the Doctor did his best. Tom answered in monosyllables, and looked fearfully sheepish, and found his best policy was always to keep his mouth full, and so have the excuse of good manners on his side for his silence. "Tom," said the Doctor, presently, steering round to a subject which it had been for some time in his mind to question his son about, "that was an extraordinary demonstration on prize-day, when Greenfield senior came up to get his scholarship." "It wasn't me," said Tom, colouring up. "My dear boy, I never supposed it was," said the Doctor, laughing. "But it surprised me very much, as well as pained me." "I couldn't help it," again said Tom. "Of course you couldn't, Tom. But I am sorry to find Greenfield is so unpopular in the school."