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Thus with various diversions and occupations his school days passed until he was about sixteen years old, when he was suddenly called away from his academic studies.

It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had made a sad blunder or two, when the awful chief broke out upon him.

“Pendennis, sir,” he said, “your idleness is incorrigible and your stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented, what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable trifler! A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity, for he will be deservedly cut off, but his maddened and heartbroken parents, who are driven to a premature grave by his crimes, or, if they live, drag on a wretched and dishonoured old age. Go on, sir, and I warn you that the very next mistake that you make shall subject you to the punishment of the rod. Who’s that laughing? What ill-conditioned boy is there that dares to laugh?” shouted the Doctor.

Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general titter behind him in the schoolroom. The orator had his back to the door of this ancient apartment, which was open, and a gentleman who was quite familiar with the place (for both Major Arthur, Pen’s uncle, and Mr. John Pendennis had been at the school) was asking the fifth-form boy who sat by the door for Pendennis. The lad, grinning, pointed to the culprit against whom the Doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just wrath. Major Pendennis could not help laughing. He remembered having stood under that very pillar where Pen the younger now stood, and having been assaulted by the Doctor’s predecessor years and years ago. The intelligence was “passed round” in an instant that it was Pendennis’s uncle, and a hundred young faces, wondering and giggling, between terror and laughter, turned now to the newcomer and then to the awful Doctor.

The Major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the Doctor, which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the card: “I must take A.P. home; his father is very ill.”

As the Doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather a scared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then, burst out in a general shout. “Silence!” roared out the Doctor, stamping with his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the Major beckoned to him gravely, and, tumbling down his books, Pen went across.

The Doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. “We will take the Juvenal at afternoon school,” he said, nodding to the Captain, and all the boys, understanding the signal, gathered up their books and poured out of the hall.

Young Pen saw by his uncle’s face that something had happened at home. “Is there anything the matter with–my mother?” he said. He could hardly speak for emotion and the tears which were ready to start.

“No,” said the Major, “but your father’s very ill. Go and pack your trunk directly; I have got a post-chaise at the gate.”