"Oh, here's the ticket, sir." "What! Wasn't it enough to send the poor boy off by a wrong train, without keeping his ticket?
Go away, sir, this instant, to your room, and stay there till I give you leave to quit it!" Billy obeyed, evidently unable to make the affair out.
By dint of telegrams and messengers, the missing boy turned up again; but it was a long time before Billy was allowed to forget the way he had "seen him off." This is just one specimen of our unlucky schoolfellow's blunders.

He was always in some trouble of the kind.

He had to cease taking lessons in chemistry, because one time he nearly succeeded in blowing himself and three or four of us up by mixing certain combustibles together by mistake; and another time he upset a bottle of sulphuric acid over his clothes.
He was always very near the bottom of his class, because he _would_ prepare the wrong lessons, or misunderstand the questions asked him.
And yet he was always anxious to get on.

Once, I remember, he confidentially asked me, if he were to learn Liddell and Scott's Lexicon by heart, whether I thought he would be able to get the Greek prize?
But he bungled more in the playground than anywhere.

Perhaps it was because we laughed at him and made him nervous.
It was rarely any one cared to have him on their side at cricket.