his bounds were curtailed; he was to attend Junior callings-over; in fact he was
so hemmed in with punishments upon every side that it was hardly possible for
him to go outside the school gates. This unparalleled list of punishments
inflicted on the first day of the half year, and intended to last till the
ensuing Christmas holidays, was not connected with any specified offence. It
required no great penetration, therefore, on the part of the boys to connect
Ernest with the putting Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Jones's shops out of bounds.
    Great indeed was the indignation about Mrs. Cross who, it was known,
remembered Dr. Skinner himself as a small boy only just got into jackets, and
had doubtless let him have many a sausage and mashed potato upon deferred
payment. The head boys assembled in conclave to consider what steps should be
taken, but hardly had they done so before Ernest knocked timidly at the
head-room door and took the bull by the horns by explaining the facts as far as
he could bring himself to do so. He made a clean breast of everything except
about the school list, and the remarks he had made about each boy's character.
This infamy was more than he could own to, and he kept his counsel concerning
it. Fortunately he was safe in doing so, for Dr. Skinner, pedant and more than
pedant though he was, had still just sense enough to turn on Theobald in the
matter of the school list. Whether he resented being told that he did not know
the characters of his own boys, or whether he dreaded a scandal about the
school, I know not, but when Theobald had handed him the list over which he had
expended so much pains, Dr. Skinner had cut him uncommonly short and then and
there, with more suavity than was usual with him, committed it to the flames
before Theobald's own eyes.
    Ernest got off with the head boys easier than he expected. It was admitted
that the offence, heinous though it was, had been committed under extenuating
circumstances; the frankness with which the culprit had confessed all, his
evidently unfeigned remorse, and the fury with which Dr. Skinner was pursuing
him tended to bring about a reaction in his favour, as though he had been more
sinned against than sinning.
    As the half year wore on his spirits gradually revived, and when attacked by
one of his fits of self-abasement [he] was in some degree consoled by the having
found out that even his father and mother, whom he had supposed so immaculate,
were no better than