“Smith, have you prepared this lesson?”
“No, sir,” I replied, relieved to be able to answer any questions, however awful.
“Why not, sir?”
Ah! that I could not answer—not to myself, still less to him. So I was silent.
“Come to me after school,” he said. “The next boy come forward.”
After school I went to him, and he escorted me to the doctor. No criminal at the Old Bailey trembled as I did at that interview. I can’t remember what was said to me. I know I wildly confessed my sins—my “cribbing,” my wasting of time—and promised to abjure them one and all.
The doctor was solemn and grave, and said a great deal to me that I was too overawed to understand or remember; after which I was sent back to my class—a punished, disgraced, and marked boy.
Need I describe my penitence: what a humble letter I wrote home, making a clean breast of all my delinquencies, and even exaggerating them in my contrition? With what grim ceremony I burned my “crib” in my study fire, and resolved (a resolution, by the way, which I succeeded in keeping) that, come what might, I would do my lessons honestly, if I did them at all!
I gave Evans to understand his company at lesson times was not desirable, and was in a rage with him when he laughed. I took to rising early, to filling every spare moment with some occupation, and altogether started afresh, like a reformed character, as I felt myself to be, and determined this time, at any rate, my progress should know no backsliding. How soon I again fell a victim to dawdling the sequel will show.
I had a long and painful struggle to recover my lost ground at Welford.