Robert's principal friend outside the family was a bird stuffer in Hammersmith; but he does not come into this story.
The Avories did not go to boarding school, or, indeed, to any school in the ordinary way at all; Mrs.Avory said she could not spare them.
Instead they were visited every day except Saturdays by Mr.Crawley and Miss Bingham, who taught them the things that one is supposed to know--Mr.Crawley taking the boys in the old billiard room, and Miss Bingham the girls in the morning room.

At some of the lessons--such as history--they all joined.

The classes were attended also by the Rotherams, the doctor's children, who lived at "Fir Grove," and Horace Campbell, the only son of the vicar.

So it was a kind of school, after all.
Horace Campbell had always intended to be a cowboy when he grew up, but a visit to a play called "Raffles" was now rather inclining him to gentlemanly burglary.

William Rotheram, like Gregory, leaned towards flying; but Jack Rotheram voted steadily for the sea, and talked of little but Osborne.
Mary Rotheram played with a bat almost as straight as "Plum" Warner's, and she knew most of the old Somersetshire songs--"Mowing the Barley," and "Lord Rendal," and "Seventeen come Sunday"-- by heart, and sang them beautifully.