“Humph!” he said, when the operation was over, “I’m afraid, Greenfield, you are not a very clever boy—”
“I know I’m not, sir,” said Stephen, quite relieved that the Doctor did not at once order him to quit Saint Dominic’s.
“Or you would have seen that this paper was a practical joke.” Then it burst all of a sudden on Stephen. And all this about “Mr Finis,” “Oh, ah,” and the rest of it had been a cruel hoax, and no more!
“Come, now, let us waste no more time. I’m not surprised,” said the Doctor, suppressing a smile by a very hard twitch; “I’m not surprised you found these questions hard. How far have you got in arithmetic?”
And then the Doctor launched Stephen into a viva voce examination, in which that young prodigy of learning acquitted himself far more favourably than could have been imagined, and at the end of which he heard that he would be placed in the fourth junior class, where it would be his duty to strain every nerve to advance, and make the best use of his time at Saint Dominic’s. Then the Doctor rang his bell.
“Tell Mr Rastle kindly to step here,” said he to the porter.
Mr Rastle appeared, and to his charge, after solemnly shaking hands and promising to be a paragon of industry and good conduct, Stephen was consigned by the head master.
“By the way,” said the Doctor, as Stephen was leaving, “will you tell the boy who gave you this paper I wish to see him?”
Stephen, who had been too much elated by the result of the real examination to recollect for the moment the trickery of the sham one, now blushed very red as he remembered what a goose he had been, and undertook to obey the Doctor’s order. And this it was very easy to do. For as he opened the study-door he saw Pembury just outside, leaning against the wall with his eyes on the clock as it struck ten.
As he caught sight of Stephen emerging from the head master’s study, his countenance fell, and he said eagerly and half-anxiously, “Didn’t I tell you ten o’clock, Greenfield?”