“Damp don’t give chilblains. Oh, I say, how miserable it is to have to shave with cold water in the dark!”
“Serve you right for having a beard!” cried another.
“Which you’d give your ears to own. Oh, hang it! now I’ve cut myself. Here, who’s got a silk hat? Pull us out a scrap of down, there’s a good fellow.”
“Wipe it dry, and stick a bit of writing-paper against it.”
“Will that stop it?”
“Yes.”
“Mind and get your hair parted right, lads. Examination day!”
“I’ll give any fellow a penny to clean my boots.”
“Why don’t you let Tycho clean ’em?”
“Hot water, gentlemen! hot water! Any gentleman who wants his boots cleaned please to set them outside the door.”
“There, get out. It won’t do, Tommy Smithers. I’d swear to that squeak of yours from a thousand.”
“If you come that trick again, Tommy, we’ll make you clean every pair of boots in the corridor,” shouted a fresh speaker, for by degrees the yawning, and creaking of iron beds and thuds of bare feet upon bare floors had grown frequent, with shuffling noises, and gurgling, and splashing, the chinking of ewers against basins, the swishing of tooth-brushes, and the stamping of chilblained feet being thrust into hard, stout boots, and all done in a hurried, bustling manner, as if those who dressed were striving by rapid movement to get some warmth into their chilly frames.
Luke Ross was one of the first dressed: a well-built, dark-eyed, keen-looking young man of five-and-twenty, with a good deal of decision about his well-shaped mouth.
The noise and bustle was on the increase. With numerous grumblings and unsatisfied longings floating about his ears, he stood gazing at the square patch of yellow light near his door, thinking of the trials of the day to come, till, apparently brought back to the present by the shudder of cold that ran through him, he turned and began to pace rapidly up and down his little room, from the dark window covered with soft pats of sooty snow to the dormitory door.
That brought no warmth, and, knowing from old experience that the fire in the theatre stove would only be represented by so much smoke, he began to beat his chest and sides in the familiar manner by flinging his arms across and across to and fro.
This set off others, and then there was the stamping of feet and the sound of blowing of hands to warm them, mingled with which was the scuffling noise made by late risers who had lain until the last minute, and were now hurrying to make up for lost time.
The clanging bell once more, giving five minutes’ law for every student to be in his place by ten minutes to seven, at which time, to the moment, the little self-possessed principal would walk into the theatre, with his intellectual head rigidly kept in place by the stiffest of white cravats.
Upon this particular morning the vice-principal had the first lecture to deliver, and the very last man had scuffled into his place, ink-bottle and note-book in hand, and a buzz of conversation had been going on for nearly a quarter of an hour before the little well-known comedy of such mornings took place.
Then enter the vice-principal, looking very brisk and eager, but particularly strained and squeezy about the eyes, and he had nearly reached the table and was scanning the rows of desks and their occupants, rising blue cold, tier above tier, into the semi-gloom beneath the organ, when a broad face that was not blue, cold, nor red, but of a yellowish white, stared him full in the eyes from the whitewashed wall, and mutely reproached him for being late.
“Dear me!” he exclaimed, “that clock is not right!”
“Yes, sir, quite right,” exclaimed half-a-dozen eager voices, and their owners consulted their watches.
“Oh, dear me, no!” exclaimed the vice-principal, sharply; “nearly a quarter of an hour fast.”
No one dared to contradict now, and the lecture by gaslight, in the cold, dark morning, went on till nearly eight, when those who assisted at tables left to look after the urns and cut the bread-and-butter.
A dozen students hurried off for this task, glad of the chance of feeling the fire in the great dining-hall; and, intent as he was upon the business of the exciting day to come, Luke Ross was not above sharing with his fellow-students, in providing a more palatable meal for himself and the head of his table by washing the coarse salt butter free of some of its brine.
The bell once more, and the rush of students into the dining-hall in search of the warmth that a couple of cups of steaming hot coffee, fresh from the tall block-tin urns, would afford.
The students assembled at the two long boards, and looked strikingly like so many schoolboys of a larger growth; there was the sharp rapping of a knife-handle upon a little square table in one corner, the rustling noise of a hundred men rising to their feet, grace spoken by the vice-principal, in a rich mellifluous voice, followed by a choral “Amen” from all present, and then the rattling of coffee cups and the buzz of conversation, as the great subject of the day—the examination—was discussed, more than one intimating in a subdued voice that it was a shame that there should have been any lecture on such a morning as this.
Breakfast at an end, there was the regular rush again, schoolboy like, out into the passage, where a knot of students gathered round one of the masters, who was giving a word or two of advice.
“Ah, Ross,” he said, smiling, “I have been saying now what I ought to have said before breakfast, that no man should eat much when he is going in for his examination. Brain grows sluggish when stomach is full.”
“I’m afraid we have all been too anxious to eat much, sir,” replied Ross.
“I’m sure you have, Ross; but don’t overdo it. Slow and steady wins the race, you know. Ah, here comes some one who has made a good meal I’ll be bound. Well, Smithers,” he continued, as a remarkably fast-looking young man came up, “have you had a good breakfast?”
“Yes, sir, as good as I could get.”
“Thought so,” said the assistant master, smiling. “Well, what certificate do you mean to take, eh? First of the first?”
“Haven’t been reading for honours, sir,” said Smithers, grinning.
“No, indeed,” said the assistant master, shaking his head. “Ah, Smithers, Smithers! why did you come here?”
“To be a Christian schoolmaster, sir,” was the reply, given with mock humility by about as unlikely a personage for the duty as ever entered an institution’s walls.
The bell once more; and at last, feeling like one in a dream, and as if, in spite of a year’s hard training and study, he was no wiser than when he first commenced, Luke Ross was in his place with a red sheet of blotting-paper before him, and the printed set of questions for the day.
The momentous time had come at last, a time which dealt so largely with his future; and yet, in spite of all his efforts, his brain seemed obstinately determined to dwell upon every subject but those printed upon that great oblong sheet of paper.
He had no cause to trouble
