hundred times, and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole hotbed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled in High Market for the purpose.
Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having learned it, could impart it much better than the teachers; as being more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood towards the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received from the jumble into a better school.
“So you want to go and see your sister, Hexam?”
“If you please, Mr. Headstone.”
“I have half a mind to go with you. Where does your sister live?”
“Why, she is not settled yet, Mr. Headstone. I’d rather you didn’t see her till she is settled, if it was all the same to you.”
“Look here, Hexam.” Mr. Bradley Headstone, highly certificated stipendiary schoolmaster, drew his right forefinger through one of the buttonholes of the boy’s coat, and looked at it attentively. “I hope your sister may be good company for you?”
“Why do you doubt it, Mr. Headstone?”
“I did not say I doubted it.”
“No, sir; you didn’t say so.”
Bradley Headstone looked at his finger again, took it out of the buttonhole and looked at it closer, bit the side of it and looked at it again.