'Poor fellow! perhaps he does not feel able to do the work,' said Mrs. Howard pityingly.
'Well, he doesn't let lessons trouble him much. He and "the cock of the walk," that's another big chap who doesn't care much about books, they take it pretty easy, except when they get an "impot," and that takes all their dinner time.'
'And what do you do at dinner time?' asked his brother at this point.
'Eat my dinner, to be sure,' answered Horace.
'Well, you don't look much the better for it. Mother, I'm going to be paid an extra shilling a week, and I vote it goes in dinners for the boy with an idea,' said Fred.
'No! No! I can do very well, and I enjoy my dinner hours now, for I often go up to the "lab.," and have a nice time to myself. Mr. Skeats told me I might go, if I did not take any of the other boys with me. You see, some of them might get up to larks, and——'
'Why don't you get up to larks?' interrupted his brother.
Horace laughed, 'Oh, you know that isn't much in my way, and there's room for everybody in a big school like Torrington's.'
'I wish the youngster did not look so serious,' said Fred, after his brother had gone to bed that night.
'He always was quiet,' remarked his mother.