During this period, while Philip was reading for his own examination, Harry was elected to a scholarship, not indeed to the older foundation of Doomington School, which was the goal of Philip's endeavours, but to the modern Council institution called the Highfield Grade School, for which Harry's more astute and vehement personality seemed to fit him more readily than for the fourth-century romanticism of Doomington School. Yet only partly to keep abreast with his friend did Philip apply himself to hard reading of a less congenial kind than poetry. It is at a very early stage in the fortunes of Angel Street youth that the shadows of tailor shop and grocery stores begin to cloud the dawn. Before the meaning of such liberty as Angel Street can afford has been grasped, it is time to study the lines of slavery. So early then had the grinding fear of a sweated agony in a factory over the Mitchen turned Philip's mind towards his only escape, to further and further schooling, beyond the boundaries of the Bridgeway Elementary School. Perhaps more immediately he felt that Doomington School would leave him free to tread the primrose path of poetry. He envisioned such black-gowned masters as figured in the adventures of Master Tom Merry; saw them walking along groves academe hidden somewhere behind the walls of Doomington School; and at their heels, imbibing the poetry these gentlemen read from gold-clasped poets illuminated upon parchment richer than the Scrolls of the Law at the Polisher Shool, a crowd of emotional youths, who only turned from poetry in order to practise at the nets or consume at Ma Pott's tuck-shop illimitable pastry.
He applied himself with fervour to French verbs, the Gulf Stream, and the vexed question of herrings in barrels. He discovered that at a certain stage in his reading the letters on the page before him lost their antique stability and began to pirouette across the page, bowing their heads, and, in the case of the genus "f" and "g," swishing their tails indecorously; soon everything would melt in a mist of grey until only by shutting his eyes and relaxing every ocular nerve he could resume his vision.
"Father!" he declared, "it gets all mixed up on the paper when I've been reading a long time. I think I need spectacles!"
"Thou canst not study," asked Reb Monash, "without wanting to be like thy elders? Go then, go! I did not want spectacles till I was five-and-thirty and I read more by the time I was ten than thou shalt have read when thou art thirty! Go then, go! Thine eyes are well enough!"
It was in the paper on geometry that his bad sight brought swiftest disaster. He had solved one or two propositions with infinite difficulty. He stared so hard and long at the paper before him on an indecipherable mass of angles and lines that the danse funèbre began sooner than usual. When his vision arrived at the stage of opacity he laid his pen down in a mood of bitter resentment.... He felt himself for the first time hating his father with a conscious hate.
The examination was being held in the Meeting Hall of Doomington School. He looked over the backs of his bent industrious competitors towards the tall arched windows. These, on their outer side, were cut by a black parapet, leaving only the upper half of the windows on that side of the hall open to the daylight. He saw dimly a dark mass moving leisurely along the parapet, now appearing behind the windows, now disappearing behind the intervening walls. It seemed almost like one of the peccant letters on his paper, incarnate in bulk. The long tail wagged playfully. Philip blinked and stared intently. It was a large and amiable rat. The rat disappeared beyond the further windows and left Philip staring blankly. The rat found the destination he had been making for unworthy of his continuous esteem. He sauntered pleasantly back and then, discovering that an incident of more than usual interest was taking place in the hall, he sat down on his haunches and looked on in friendly concern. Philip felt the rat's eyes looking interestedly down upon his own. He could have sworn that the rat inclined his head with the gesture of a commendatory uncle.
"Never mind, old lad!" said the rat. "You're making a howling mess of your geometry, it's true! If Mister Blabberthwaite, the geometry man, had the least say in the matter there'd be no chance for you, my hearty. And you've by no means gratified my expectations regarding your geography paper, I must say. It was, perhaps, coming it a bit thick to ask the names of all the capes on the American sea-board, that I admit; but that wasn't any excuse for chucking Flamborough Head at the mouth of the Irrawaddy which, if I mistake not, is not in America at all. It's in Queensland or something of the sort. However, that's no odds! Don't worry, I feel a strong suspicion that Doomington School will make room for you yet ... although don't breathe a word, or it's all u.p., to use a vulgarism. No, not a word! The truth is," whispered the rat, lifting a silencing paw to his nose, "Mr. Furness and I have got something up our sleeves for you, something you can't guess; but it's there right enough. Verb. sap., as people invariably say upon arriving at my own respectable age. But Esmeralda's squeaking, old chap! Sorry I can't stay ... but these wives, you know! ... Well, so long, so long, and keep going! So long!" And the rat resumed his urbane path.
It was impossible to get down to his geometry again, his head was swimming. He rose and deposited his papers before the dignified grey-haired worthy at the door, who, if he wasn't Mr. Furness, the head master, was at least, surely, the Principal Governor of the School.
When they placed the subjects for an English essay before him and he read:
"A day in my favourite church."