CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
TELSON AND PARSON GO TO AN EVENING PARTY.
It was the Saturday before the boat-race, and the excitement of Willoughby was working up every hour.

Boys who were generally in the habit of lying in bed till the chapel bell began to ring had been up at six for a week past, to look at the practices on the river.

Parliament had adjourned till after the event, and even the doings of the rival captains indoors were forgotten for a while in prospect of the still more exciting contest out of doors.
Everybody--even the Welchers, who at the last moment had given up any attempt to form a crew, and "scratched"-- found it hard to think or talk of any other subject, and beyond the school bounds, in Shellport itself, a rumour of the coming race had got wind and attracted many outsiders to the river banks.
But it was not the prospect of the coming race which this Saturday afternoon was agitating the mind of Master Henry Brown.
Brown was a Limpet, belonging to the schoolhouse, who occupied the distinguished position of being the only day-boarder in Willoughby.

His parents lived in Shellport, and thus had the benefit of the constant society of their dear Harry; while the school, on the other hand, was deprived of that advantage for a portion of every day in the term.
It was probably to make up for this deprivation that Mr and Mrs Brown made it a practice of giving an evening party once a term, to which the doctor and his ladies were always invited, and also any two of dear Harry's friends he liked to name.
In this way the fond parents not only felt they were doing a polite and neighbourly act to their son's schoolmaster and schoolfellows, but that they were also the means of bringing together teacher and pupil in an easy unconstrained manner which would hardly be possible within the walls of the school itself.
It was the prospect of one of these delightful entertainments that was exhilarating Brown this Saturday afternoon.
And it must be confessed the excitement was due to very opposite emotions in the breast of the day-boarder.

The doctor and his ladies were coming! On the last two occasions they had been unfortunately prevented, which had been a great blow to Brown's "pa and ma" but a relief to Brown himself.