 than he
knew or thought he knew. He was examined, re-examined, cross-examined - sent to
the retirement of his own bedroom and cross-examined again; the smoking in Mrs.
Jones's kitchen all came out - which boys smoked and which did not; which boys
owed roughly how much and where, which boys swore and used bad language.
Theobald was resolved that this time Ernest should, as he called it, take him
into his confidence without reserve, so the school list which went with Dr.
Skinner's half-yearly bill was brought out, and the most secret character of
each boy was gone through seriatim by Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex, so far as it was in
Ernest's power to give information concerning it - and yet Theobald had on the
preceding Sunday preached a less feeble sermon than he commonly preached, upon
the horrors of the Inquisition. No matter how awful was the depravity revealed
to them, the pair never flinched, but probed and probed, till they were on the
point of reaching subjects more delicate than they had yet touched upon. Here
Ernest's unconscious self took the matter up, and made a resistance to which his
conscious self was unequal, by tumbling him off his chair in a fit of fainting.
    Mr. Martin was sent for and pronounced the boy to be seriously unwell; at
the same time he prescribed absolute rest and absence from nervous excitement.
So the anxious parents were unwillingly compelled to be content with what they
had got already - being frightened into leading him a quiet life for the short
remainder of the holidays. They were not idle, but Satan can find as much
mischief for busy hands as for idle ones, so he sent a little job in the
direction of Battersby which Theobald and Christina undertook immediately. It
would be a pity, they reasoned, that Ernest should leave Roughborough now that
he had been there three years; it would be difficult to find another school for
him, and to explain why he had left his present. Besides, Dr. Skinner and
Theobald were supposed to be old friends, and it would be unpleasant to offend
him; these were all valid reasons for not removing the boy. The proper thing to
do, then, would be to warn Dr. Skinner confidentially of the state of his
school, and to furnish him with a school list annotated with the remarks
extracted from Ernest, which should be appended to the name of each boy.
    Theobald was the perfection of neatness; while his son was ill upstairs he
copied out the school list so that he could
