CHAPTER III.
PEA-SHOOTING AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
Leslie soon made himself at home with the boys, more especially those of his own age or two or three years his senior; the elders of the school, those who had discarded jackets and sported tailed-coats, he looked at from a distance, and viewed with a certain amount of awe, thinking he should never attain to their size or standing in the school; and although these superfine gentlemen always gave him a friendly nod when they chanced to meet, or employed him in running an errand, he never presumed to be familiar with one of them. There were also several boys in the school about Leslie's own age, with whom he did not care to associate, whose dispositions, ways of thinking, and ordinary pursuits, were quite opposed to his own. But with Arthur Hall, Johnnie Lynch, Jones, and Moore, he was soon a close and firm friend. He was very pleased to find that he was to occupy the same bedroom as that of his friends.
The doctor, Leslie found to be a very kind but very firm master; while he made every allowance for a boy's incapacity or sheer inability to learn a particular task, he showed no mercy to those who could learn and would not, either from idleness or inattention. There were three other masters beside the doctor, who followed in the steps of their principal.
Mrs Price extended many acts of kindness towards Leslie, for his father's sake at first, but after she knew him better, for his own, so that Leslie wrote home glowing accounts of the pleasures of school life; his races on the river, the long country walks with the doctor, and the tales told in bed.
During his first month, everything was too fresh, pleasant, and exciting, for Leslie even to think about having "a lark;" but in the first week of his second month he gave evident proof that this fault had not disappeared from, or been overcome in his character. He forgot the promise he had made to his papa, or the nearly fatal results of his last "lark;" he forgot all about the many good resolutions he had made in his own heart; all which led him into fresh trouble.
Near to Ascot House was a small market-town, which the boys were allowed to visit during play hours and on half-holidays; but after dusk no one was permitted to be absent from the playground, and after the names were read over for the evening, without special leave, no one could absent himself from the school-house; this rule was rigorously enforced by the doctor.