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Dick, who had barely glanced up at his stepmother's entrance, and then continued reading, now knit his brow in an angry frown, and seemed unwilling to answer; while Clare, the elder of the two young ladies, laughed carelessly as she said, "Our invasion for that purpose was hardly necessary, I fancy. It is simply the old story over again badly-prepared lessons."

One sees him striding about the establishment with his gown streaming out behind him urging on the groundsman or the gardener, or dignified, expounding the particular advantages of Seagate to enquiring parents, one sees him unnaturally cheerful and facetious at the midday dinner table, one imagines him keeping up high aspirations in a rather too hastily scribbled sermon in the school pulpit, or keeping up an enthusiasm for beautiful language in a badly-prepared lesson on Virgil, or expressing unreal indignation and unjustifiably exalted sentiments to evil doers, and one realizes his disadvantage against the quiet youngster whose retentive memory was storing up all these impressions for an ultimate judgment, and one understands, too, a certain relief that mingled with his undeniable emotion when at last the time came for young Benham, "the one living purpose" of his life, to be off to Minchinghampton and the next step in the mysterious ascent of the English educational system.

The men were ill-prepared to meet the requirements expected of soldiers, to undergo forced marches in the burning heat of summer, to accustom themselves so suddenly to the scant and badly-prepared food, night pickets in the open, in face of the enemy, and all the hardships incident to a soldier's life in the field.