And now several long four-syllabled words come together, and the boy with the dictionary strikes work.
"I am not going to look out any more words," says he; "we've done the quantity.

Ten to one we shan't get so far.

Let's go out into the close." "Come along, boys," cries East, always ready to leave "the grind," as he called it; "our old coach is laid up, you know, and we shall have one of the new masters, who's sure to go slow and let us down easy." So an adjournment to the close was carried nem.con., little Arthur not daring to uplift his voice; but, being deeply interested in what they were reading, stayed quietly behind, and learnt on for his own pleasure.
As East had said, the regular master of the form was unwell, and they were to be heard by one of the new masters--quite a young man, who had only just left the university.

Certainly it would be hard lines if, by dawdling as much as possible in coming in and taking their places, entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of the regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of boys for wasting time in school, they could not spin out the lesson so that he should not work them through more than the forty lines.

As to which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master and his form--the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance, that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for a shell lesson; the former, that there was no fixed quantity, but that they must always be ready to go on to fifty or sixty lines if there were time within the hour.