At length the bell above the matron’s door began to toll, and there was a general movement among the stragglers in its direction.
About twenty boys, mostly of our heroes’ age, assembled in the tea room. Their small band looked almost lost in that great hall, as they clustered, of one accord, for warmth and comfort, at one end of the long table.
The matron entered and said grace, and then proceeded to pour out tea for her hungry family, while the boys themselves, at her injunction, passed round the bread-and-butter and eggs.
A meal is one of the most civilising institutions going; and Dick, after two cups of Templeton tea, and several cubic inches of Templeton bread-and-butter, felt amiably inclined towards his left-hand neighbour, a little timorous-looking boy, who blushed when anybody looked at him, and nearly fainted when he heard his own voice answering Mrs Partlett’s enquiry whether he wanted another cup.
Apart from a friendly motive, it seemed to Dick it would be good practice to begin talking to a youth of this unalarming aspect. He therefore enquired, “Are you a new boy?”
The boy started to hear himself addressed; then looking shyly up in the speaker’s face, and divining that no mischief lurked there, he replied—
“Yes.”
Dick took another gulp of tea, and continued, “Where do you live—in London?”
“No—I live in Devonshire.”
Dick returned to his meal again, and exchanged some sentences with Heathcote before he resumed.