So I stopped short.
"Besides," said she, "Mr Girdler thinks it the best thing, and he is your guardian." This was unanswerable, and I gave it up.
But I was not at all consoled.

The bare idea of Tempest, or Brown, or any of the other fellows getting to know that I, Thomas Jones, aged thirteen, who had held my own at Plummer's, and played in my day in the third Eleven, was going to attend a girls' school, and be taught Latin and sums by a--a female, was enough to make my hair stand on end.

How they would laugh and wax merry at my expense! How they would draw pictures of me in the book covers with long curls and petticoats! How they would address me as "Jemima," and talk to one another about me in a high falsetto voice! How they would fall into hysterics when they met me, and weep copiously, and ask me to lend them hairpins and parasols! I knew what it would be like only too well, and I quaked as I imagined it.
My one hope was that at Fallowfield nobody knew me; at least, nobody who mattered.
"At least," said I to myself, "if I am to go and herd with a parcel of girls, I'll let them see I'm something better than a girl myself." When I presented myself at my guardian's office on the appointed morning in order to start on my commercial career, I met with a reception even less flattering than I had pictured to myself.
Mr Girdler was out, and had left no instructions about me.

So for two hours I sat in the waiting-room, balancing my cap on my knee, and trying to work up the spots on the dingy wall-paper into geometrical figures.
When at last he came, so far from commending my patience, he had the face to reproach me for sitting there idle instead of getting some one to set me to work.
"You are not at school here, remember," said he, by way of being sarcastic; "you come here to work." "I worked at school," said I meekly.
"So I hear," said he.

"Now go to Mr Evans, and tell him you want a job." Whereupon my genial guardian quitted me.