SCHOOL DAYS
himself back again and take possession of us down to our very toes.
It was in this state that Master Tom lay at half-past seven on the morning following the day of his arrival, and from his clean, little, white bed watched the movements of Bogle (the generic name by which the successive shoeblacks of the School-house were known) as he marched round from bed to bed, collecting the dirty shoes and boots, and depositing clean ones in their places.
There he lay, half doubtful as to where exactly in the universe he was, but conscious that he had made a step in life which he had been anxious to make. It was only just light as he looked lazily out of the wide windows, and saw the tops of the great elms, and the rooks circling about and cawing remonstrances to the lazy ones of their commonwealth before starting in a body for the neighboring ploughed fields. The noise of the room-door closing behind Bogle, as he made his exit with the shoe-basket under his arm, roused Tom thoroughly, and he sat up in bed and looked round the room. What in the world could be the matter with his shoulders and loins? He felt as if he had been severely beaten all down his back, the natural result of his performance at his first match. He drew up his knees and rested his chin on them, and went over all the events of yesterday, rejoicing in his new life, what he had seen of It, and all that was to come.
Presently one or two of the other boys roused themselves and began to sit up and talk to one another in low tones. Then East, after a roll or two, came to an anchor also, and, nodding to Tom, began examining his ankle.
"What a pull," said he, "that it's lie in bed, for I shall be as lame as a tree, I think."
It was Sunday morning, and Sunday lectures had not yet been established; so that nothing but breakfast intervened between bed and eleven-o'clock chapel—a gap by no means easy to fill up; in fact, though received with the correct amount of grumbling,
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