But the new year brought Jabez a reprieve by the uncourtly hands of Joshua Brookes. Meeting Simon and Jabez at a stall in the Apple-market, where, the better to bargain, he had laid down a pile of old classical school-books (Joshua was a collector of these, which he retailed again to the boys at prices varying with his mood, or his estimate of the purchaser’s pocket), he accosted the former. “Well, old Leathershanks, what are you going to make of young Cheat-the-fishes there? I suppose he’s to follow your own trade, he began to _tan hides_ so early?” And the glance which shot from under his shaggy brows caused the boy to blush, and shrink behind his protector. Simon’s eyes twinkled, but he shook his head as he answered: “Nay, Parson Bruks, we’n thowt o’ sendin’ him t’ th’ cotton fact’ry; but it fair goos agen th’ grain to send th’ little chap through th’ streets to wark Winter an’ Summer, weet or dry, afore th’ sun’s oop an’ abeawt _his_ wark. But we conno’ keep him bout it—toimes are so bad.” “H’m! Then what a stupid old leather-head you must be not to think of the College, where he’d be kept and fed and clothed and educated!—_educated_, man—do you hear?” Simon heard, and his eyes again twinkled and winked at the new idea presented to him. “And apprenticed!” he echoed, with a long-drawn, gasping breath. “Ay, and apprenticed.” The parson, cramming his pockets with apples, for which he had higgled with much persistence, handed one to Jabez with the question— “How would you like to be a College boy, Jabez, and wear a long blue coat, like that fellow yonder” (pointing to a boy then crossing the market on an errand), “and learn to write and cipher, as well as to read?” “If you please’n, aw’d loike it moore nor eawt.” And his animated face was a clearer answer than his words. Joshua then read the lad a brief homily to the effect that only good and honourable boys could find admission, winding up with— “If you’re a _very_ good lad, I’ll see what can be done for you.” He interrupted thanks with— “Easter’s very near, Sim, so you’ll have to stir your stumps to prove that our _honourable_ young friend came honourably into the world. I’ll get the forms and fill them up for you, and his baptismal register too.” He snatched up his books and was off, the tassel of his collegiate cap and the cassock he wore flying loose as he hurried away muttering to himself— “What an old fool I am to bother about the lad! I daresay he’ll turn round and sting me in the end, like the rest of the snakes I have warmed. As great an idiot as old dame Clowes!” Chetham’s College, or Hospital, is a long, low, ancient stone edifice, built on the rock above the mouth of the Irk, with two arms of unequal length, stretching towards church and town, and embracing a large quadrangle used as a playground, which has for its fourth and southern boundary a good, useful garden.