"Monsieur," and the Count bowed to Bulldog, "and you," and now he bowed to the boys, "all my friends of the Seminary, I have the honour to ask a favour which your politeness will not allow you to refuse. Next Saturday I will dare to hold a reception in this place, with the permission of the good Bull---- I do forget myself--I mean the distinguished master. And when you come, I promise you that I will not offer you coffee--pouf! it is not for the brave boys I see before me, _non_," and the Count became very roguish. "I will put a leetle, very leetle sentence on the----" ("Blackboard," suggested Bulldog). "_Merci_, yes, the blackboard; no, the honourable master he will have the goodness to write it in his so beautiful characters. One sentence, that is all, and you will sit for one hour in this room where you make your studies, and you will write all the beautiful things which come into your heads about that sentence. You will then do me the pleasure of letting me carry home all those beautiful things, and I will read them; and the writer who affects me most, I will ask him to accept a book of many volumes, and the Lor' Mayor" ("Provost," interpolated Bulldog) "will present it on the great day in the Town Hall. "No one, not even the honourable master himself, will know that leetle sentence till it be written on the--the----" ("Blackboard," said Bulldog, with asperity), "and every boy will be able to write many things about that sentence. The scholars upon whom I do felicitate the honourable master will write much learning," and the Count made a graceful inclination in the direction of the two Dowbiggins; "and the brave boys who love the sport, they will also write, ah! ah!"--and the Count nodded cheerfully in the direction of Speug--"such wonderful things. There will be no books; no, you will have your heads, and so it will be the fair play, as you say," repeated the Count with much satisfaction, "the fair play." Bulldog dismissed the school after he had explained that no one need come unless he wished, but that anyone who didn't come was missing the opportunity of securing an honourable distinction, and would also show himself to be an ungrateful little scoundrel for all that the Count had done for the Seminary. "Dod," said Jock Howieson, with much native shrewdness, "aifter all his palaver it's naething but anither confounded exercise," for that worthy had suffered much through impositions, and had never been able to connect one sentence with another in an intelligent manner. "The Dowbiggins can go if they want, and they're welcome to the books. I'm going next Saturday to Woody Island--will you come, Speug?" And it hung in the balance whether or not the Count would be openly affronted next Saturday when he found himself in the company of half a dozen "swats," while his "jolly dogs" were off in a pack to their island of romance.