learning on? But he is most excellent company, that man, and I want him to come and see me at my Lock, up the river.”

“I’ll tell him so.”

“D’ye think he’ll come?” asked Riderhood.

“I am sure he will.”

“Having got your word for him,” said Riderhood, “I shall count upon him. P’raps you’d so fur obleege me, learned governor, as tell him that if he don’t come precious soon, I’ll look him up.”

“He shall know it.”

“Thankee. As I says a while ago,” pursued Riderhood, changing his hoarse tone and leering round upon the class again, “though not a learned character my own self, I do admire learning in others, to be sure! Being here and having met with your kind attention, Master, might I, afore I go, ask a question of these here young lambs of yourn?”

“If it is in the way of school,” said Bradley, always sustaining his dark look at the other, and speaking in his suppressed voice, “you may.”

“Oh! It’s in the way of school!” cried Riderhood. “I’ll pound it, Master, to be in the way of school. Wot’s the diwisions of water, my lambs? Wot sorts of water is there on the land?”

Shrill chorus: “Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds.”

“Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds,” said Riderhood. “They’ve got all the lot, Master! Blowed if I shouldn’t have left out lakes, never having clapped eyes upon one, to my knowledge. Seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Wot is it, lambs, as they ketches in seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds?”

Shrill chorus (with some contempt for the ease of the question):

“Fish!”

“Good a-gin!” said Riderhood. “But wot else is it, my lambs, as they sometimes ketches in rivers?”

Chorus at a loss. One shrill voice: “Weed!”

“Good agin!” cried Riderhood. “But it ain’t weed neither. You’ll never guess, my dears. Wot is it, besides fish, as they sometimes ketches in rivers? Well! I’ll tell you. It’s suits o” clothes.”

Bradley’s face changed.

“Leastways, lambs,” said Riderhood, observing him out of the corners of his eyes, “that’s wot I my own self sometimes ketches in rivers. For strike me blind, my lambs, if I didn’t ketch in a river the wery bundle under my arm!”

The class looked at the master, as if appealing from the irregular entrapment of this mode of examination. The master looked at the examiner, as if he would have torn him to pieces.

“I ask your pardon, learned governor,” said Riderhood, smearing his sleeve across his mouth as he laughed with a relish, “tain’t fair to the lambs, I know. It wos a bit of fun of mine. But upon my soul I drawed this here bundle out of a river! It’s a Bargeman’s suit of clothes. You see, it had been sunk there by the man as wore it, and I got it up.”

“How do you know it was sunk by the man who wore it?” asked Bradley.