"If you please, sir," I said, from the bottom of the table, after getting on a stool to be heard all up it; "the meaning of this paper is, that I am going to learn all this, for nothing."
Mr. Crankhead stared at the men of science, and with one accord they stared at him; and they would have been amused at my mistake, if it had not been too serious.
"Upmore, you have a great deal yet to learn;" the Principal spoke severely; "do you imagine that Science has ever imparted her blessings, for nothing?"
"I am sure, I did not know, sir," I replied; "but you said that all these were essential parts of true education; and old Rum says—Dr. Rumbelow, I mean,—in this paper, that all those are included in the money for the term."
"But we have changed all that, my boy. Our ideas of what education is are entirely different from those of the obsolete system, under which you have been trained hitherto."
"Then if you please, sir, my father ought to have had a new paper sent him, before he sent me back to school; or how can he tell what he is to pay? I am sure, that he won't pay a farthing more than he had to pay last quarter."
"Thomas Upmore, you may go;" the new Principal said, quite loftily, after whispering, and receiving whispers; "you need not return to the schoolroom at all, or to any part of these premises, except where your clothes and books are. You are too benighted, and contumacious, to deserve any higher education; such as you expect to get for nothing. Branker, see that this boy does not communicate with the other boys. Pack all his things up, and put him in a cab."
Thus was I discharged, very rudely as I thought, from the poor old Partheneion, now entitled the Epistemonicon; and I could not help crying at the manner of it, because people would say that I had been expelled.
But Branker, the new man-of-all-work, who seemed to care little about his place, at the sight of a shilling in my hand, allowed me to have a word or two, in the passage, with Jack Windsor.
"Jack, they have given me the sack," I said; "because I wouldn't put my name down, for father to pay sixteen guineas extra. If I had, I should have been whacked at both ends, for certain. He would have whacked me for doing it; and they would have whacked me worse, for not getting the tin. You have put down your dad for thirty-two guineas. Mind that, and I wish you luck of it."