There are two of them, and I don't know which room you'll be sent to--I hope mine, but we'll soon see, as `Smiley' arranges all that." Passing back through the same passages again by which we had descended from the eating-room--or "refectory," as Dr Hellyer styled that bare apartment--and up a second flight of stairs beyond, Tom leading the way, we finally reached a long chamber which must have stretched along the whole front of the house, immediately above the room devoted to meals.
Some twenty beds were ranged down the length of this dormitory, in the same way as is customary in a hospital ward, some of them already occupied by boys who had quietly undressed, while the rest of the fellows were hurriedly pulling off their clothes and preparing their toilets for the night.
At the door of the dormitory stood a tall, cadaverous-looking man of some fifty years or thereabouts whom I had not before seen.

To him Tom now briefly introduced me in the most laconic fashion.
"New boy, Mr Smallpage," he said.
"Oh, new boy--Leigh, I suppose, eh ?" replied this gentleman in an absent sort of way--"Is he in your charge, Larkyns ?" "Well, sir," said Tom, rather at a loss to answer this question, not wishing to tell an untruth and yet desirous for certain reasons that I should be associated with him, "I've made friends with him, that's all." "Ah, then, he can have that vacant bed next yours," decided Mr "Smiley," kindly, seeing Tom's drift.
"Thank you, sir," said my chum in a gleeful tone at having his wish gratified.

"Come along with me, Martin, and I will show you your place.
Is it not jolly ?" he whispered to me as we proceeded up the room along the centre space left vacant between the two rows of beds lining the walls on either side, "why, it's just the very thing we wanted!" Tom's bed and mine were close to one of the windows in the front of the house, which fact delighted me very much, as I thought I should be able to see the sea as soon as I woke in the morning.
My chum, however, threw a damper on this reflection by suggesting that, when the first gong sounded our _reveille_ at six o'clock AM, we should have such sharp work before us to dress and get down to the refectory in the quarter of an hour allowed us for the operation, that unless I wished to lose my breakfast--a dreadful contingency considering the then empty state of my body--I should have precious little time for star- gazing! Tom's mention of "shovelling on my clothes," as he delicately termed the act of dressing, immediately reminded me of my box, which I had quite forgotten all about ever since my leaving it behind me in the little room out of the hall on the termination of my first interview with Dr Hellyer.
"I wonder where it is ?" I asked Tom.
"Oh, it has been brought up-stairs all right.

The old woman would see to that," he said.
"Then where is it ?" I inquired.

"I want my night-shirt now." "It is probably in the locker room," replied my chum, "shall I ask Smiley to let us go and see ?" "Do, if you don't mind," said I; and Tom, whisking down the room in a somewhat neglige costume, readily obtained the requisite "permit of search." He then beckoned me to follow him towards a second door communicating from the dormitory with a smaller apartment beyond, whose sides, I observed on entering within, were buttressed from floor to ceiling with a series of diminutive square wooden chests, ranged along the walls on top of one another, like the deed boxes noticeable in the private office of a solicitor in large practice, and all numbered in similar fashion, seriatim, with large black figures on their front faces.
"Every boy has one of these lockers to stow his traps in," explained Tom, "and Smiley said you could have 31, next to mine, which is 30--just in the same way, old fellow, as our beds are alongside--good of him, isn't it ?" "Yes," I replied, "he seems a kind chap." "He is," said Tom; "but, come, Martin, if your box is here you'd better bundle in your things at once, and leave it out on the landing for the old woman to take down again to the cellar, where all our trunks and such-like are kept." My box was soon found; and my scanty wardrobe being quickly removed to the numbered receptacle allotted to me, Tom and I returned to the dormitory, where, as I had taken care to bring back with me the garment I required for present exigencies, we both soon made an end of our toilets and jumped into our respective beds.
I had expected that as soon as all the boys were under the sheets, the mathematical master would have left the room; but, no, "Smiley," much to my surprise, proceeded to undress, and occupy a large bed at the end of the dormitory close to the entrance.
Under these circumstances, therefore, instead of the row that would otherwise have gone on, in the absence of any presiding genius of order, the room was soon hushed in quiet repose; and, the last thing I can recollect hearing, ere dropping to sleep, after wishing Tom a _sotto voce_ "good night," was the sound of the many-voiced sea as the waves whispered to each other on the beach--the gentle lullaby noise it made, to the fancy of my cockney ears, exactly resembling that created by the distant traffic of the London streets in the early hours of the morning to those living within the city radius..