Page:Tom Brown's School Days (6th ed).djvu/290

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TOM BROWN'S

CHAPTER IV

THE BIRD-FANCIERS


"I have found out a gift for my fair,
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed:
But let me the plunder forbear,
And got that night disguised in drink."

—MS. Ballad.


THE next morning at first lesson Tom was turned back in his lines, and so had to wait till the second round, while Martin and Arthur said theirs all right and got out of school at once. When Tom got out and ran down to breakfast at Harrowell's they were missing, and Stumps informed him that they had swallowed down their breakfasts and gone off together, where, he

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