Tom went to his place, feeling a little shy of his new school-fellows, for they all seemed to stare at him so much. His jacket, his stockings, and even his boots seemed to undergo a critical examination by the class, and this culminated in a roar of laughter when Tom gave his name to his new teacher.
"What is there to laugh at?" the young man asked calmly, while Tom grew furiously angry, for he could hear half a dozen voices repeating his name, and mimicking the tone in which he spoke. Whispers about the "new chap" were passed from one to the other as Tom went to his seat.
And when it came to his turn to read, there was a fresh burst of laughter before he had uttered half a dozen words. But Tom read the sentence unmoved, and then he said, "Please, sir, I can read a harder book than this," hoping he might be moved into another class.
"Harder book than this!" muttered two or three. "Hear to him, Charley," said one, in a loud whisper; "new chap wants harder book that we may all get the cane, 'cos we can't read un. I'll tell my brother Bill to wollop un when us gets out."
Tom did not hear this, but his fluent reading was evidently an offence to some of his class-mates. For while they spelled and stumbled through the words, Tom read them out in a half whisper. And when it came to his turn in the reading lesson again, he read his piece in great triumph.
When the lesson came to an end, he said, "Please, sir, hadn't I better go into another class; I was in the Sixth Standard at my other school, and—"
"There, go back to your place, my boy," said the teacher, "and I'll speak to Mr. Murray after school."
But before school was over, Tom learned to his dismay that this was the highest class. And he heard the teacher say that, work as hard as they might, they would never get above half a dozen boys fit for the Sixth Standard.
Tom went home greatly disgusted. He rushed in to where his mother sat sewing, hot and angry.
"I'm not going to that miserable old school again," he said. "Why, it isn't a bit like Mr. Potter's."