272 WHISPERS FROM FAIRYLAND. [v.

 

education that he should come up to a certain stan-
dard in mathematics, which not five boys in a hundred
ever need or do look at again in after life, and to make
a knowledge of French and German a secondary and
minor consideration, which would be of material ad-
vantage, probably, to ninety-five boys out of the same
number. It isn’t the least absurd, either, (though it
isn’t Eton’s fault, poor thing) to take pains to get a
good Head Master, and then, instead of leaving him to
command, as the colonel of a regiment does, those over
whom he is placed, to put over him a Governing Body
who know nothing at all, except theoretically, about
education or the management of boys, and whose only
chance of being useful is never to interfere at all.
And your own peculiar Eton ways are not absurd at.
all, either. Oh no! You don’t call it “six o’clock
lesson” when you go into school at seven ; when your
“presence” is necessary to answer to your names ‘in:
the school-yard, you don’t call it “ absence ;” and when
you are ill, and have to stay zz, you néver term it
“staying out/” Oh no! there’s nothing absurd about
Eton at all!’

These words, and the tone of the old gentleman,
not unnaturally irritated Harry considerably, and he
began to prepare to answer in an angry manner. He
felt bound to make a gallant defence of the Governing
Body (so dear to those Etonians who think their
school has been improved by its constitution), to vindi-
cate the necessity of mathematics (so beloved by all
boys, and the comfort and solace in after life of every-
one who, whatever his natural taste may be, has been
forced to study them), and toexplain the school phrases,