So having recorded, and being about to record, my hero's fights of all sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to give an account of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows whom he ever had to encounter in this manner.
It was drawing towards the close of Arthur's first half-year, and the May evenings were lengthening out.

Locking-up was not till eight o'clock, and everybody was beginning to talk about what he would do in the holidays.

The shell, in which form all our dramatis personae now are, were reading, amongst other things, the last book of Homer's "Iliad," and had worked through it as far as the speeches of the women over Hector's body.

It is a whole school-day, and four or five of the School-house boys (amongst whom are Arthur, Tom, and East) are preparing third lesson together.

They have finished the regulation forty lines, and are for the most part getting very tired, notwithstanding the exquisite pathos of Helen's lamentation.