 lady I had seen in
the study, whom he had married for love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a
world of poor relations (so our fellows said) ready to swarm the Doctor out of
house and home. Also, how the Doctor's cogitating manner was attributable to his
being always engaged in looking out for Greek roots; which, in my innocence and
ignorance, I supposed to be a botanical furor on the Doctor's part, especially
as he always looked at the ground when he walked about, until I understood that
they were roots of words, with a view to a new Dictionary which he had in
contemplation. Adams, our head-boy, who had a turn for mathematics, had made a
calculation, I was informed, of the time this Dictionary would take in
completing, on the Doctor's plan, and at the Doctor's rate of going. He
considered that it might be done in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine
years, counting from the Doctor's last, or sixty-second, birthday.
    But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must have
been a badly-composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the
kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone
hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he walked up and down that part of the
court-yard which was at the side of the house, with the stray rooks and jackdaws
looking after him with their heads cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more
knowing they were in worldly affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only
get near enough to his creaking shoes to attract his attention to one sentence
of a tale of distress, that vagabond was made for the next two days. It was so
notorious in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut these
marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows, and turn them out of the
court-yard, before they could make the Doctor aware of their presence; which was
sometimes happily effected within a few yards of him, without his knowing
anything of the matter, as he jogged to and fro. Outside his own domain, and
unprotected, he was a very sheep for the shearers. He would have taken his
gaiters off his legs, to give away. In fact, there was a story current among us
(I have no idea, and never had, on what authority, but I have believed it for so
