Arthur laid the matter before his tutor, who informed him that he must pay up, and be a little less casual in his habits in future. He therefore wrote a reluctant cheque for ten pounds, and having thus painfully imbibed the first lesson that a schoolmaster must learn--namely, the importance of attending to details--departed to take up his appointment at Eaglescliffe. He arrived the day before term began, to find that lodgings had been apportioned to him at a house in the village, half a mile from the School. His first evening was spent in making the place habitable. That is to say, he removed a number of portraits of his landlady's relatives from the walls and mantelpiece, and stored them, together with a collection of Early Victorian heirlooms--wool-mats and prism-laden glass vases--in a cupboard under the window-seat. In their place he set up fresh gods; innumerable signed photographs of young men, some in frames, some in rows along convenient ledges, others bunched together in a sort of wire entanglement much in vogue among the undergraduates of that time. Some of these photographs were mounted upon light-blue mounts, and these were placed in the most conspicuous position. Upon the walls he hung a collection of framed groups of more young men, with bare knees and severe expressions, in some of which Arthur Robinson himself figured. After that, having written to his mother and a girl in South Kensington, he walked up the hill in the darkness to the Schoolhouse, where he was to be received in audience by the Head. The great man was sitting at ease before his study fire, and exhibited unmistakable signs of recent slumber. "I want you to take Remove B, Robinson," he said. "They are a mixed lot. About a quarter of them are infant prodigies--Foundation Scholars--who make this form their starting-point for higher things; and the remainder are centenarians, who regard Remove B as a sort of scholastic Chelsea Hospital, and are fully prepared to end their days there. Stir 'em up, and don't let them intimidate the small boys into a low standard of work. Their subjects this term will be _Cicero de Senectute_ and the _Alcestis_, without choruses. Have you any theories about the teaching of boys?" "None whatever," replied Arthur Robinson frankly. "Good! There is only one way to teach boys. Keep them in order: don't let them play the fool or go to sleep; and they will be so bored that they will work like niggers merely to pass the time. That's education in a nutshell. Good night!" * * * * *