"From LALLIE CLONMELL, B. HOUSE, HAMCHESTER COLLEGE, TO FITZROY CLONMELL, c/o MESSRS. KING AND Co., BOMBAY, INDIA.

"MY DARLING DAD,

"It's eleven o'clock at night and I ought to be getting to bed, but it's mail day to-morrow and I'm going to the Chesters at Fareham quite early, so I'll do your letter to-night. I'm sleepy enough, for I've been out with the Hamchester hounds to-day. Mr. Ballinger has come to hunt here, why, I leave you to imagine, and he mounted me and took me. Tony had forbidden me to go till we heard from you, but he went to Oxford; then I met Mr. Ballinger; then I had ever such a row with Miss Foster, and I felt reckless; and as Tony was not there to make me feel conscientious or repentant I went. I didn't enjoy it much, though the day and the little mare and the run were all as good as they could be. Mr. Ballinger is going to the Chesters also. There's a Primrose meeting to-morrow night, and I've got to sing some absurd tum-ti-tum sort of Jingo song about Empire and Tariff Reform and a large loaf. They call it a 'topical' song over here. I'd much rather sing them 'The Vicar of Bray' or 'Love's Young Dream' or 'Rory O'More,' but they won't let me. I offered to.

"Dad, dear, you will have gathered from my letters that Miss Foster and I do not exactly hit it off. I could forgive her not liking me, though I think it's bad taste on her part, if only she wouldn't treat me as though I were a contagious disease. The boys call her Germs, but indeed it's me that she makes feel a mass of microbes of the most noxious kind. She's rude, Dad, downright rude; and it would be absurd to say she doesn't mean it, for she does. And what's more, she takes care that I know she means it. I wouldn't mind a bit if she was ever so pernicketty and peppery if only she would be kind and pleasant sometimes, but she never is pleasant--to me. And yet I can't help admiring her for the way she looks after B. House. She really loves the boys, and if one of them is the least little bit ill Miss Foster is in a dreadful way. Both she and Tony are very worried just now because a boy is ill. They fear he has got scarlet fever. There has been a case in another house.

"Miss Foster has taken it into her head that I am bad for the boys, and that's one reason why she dislikes me. In what way I'm bad for them I don't know, and any that I have met seem to like talking to me, but whenever they do, I can see she is worried. I think she likes Tony awfully--but who doesn't? Yet she doesn't seem to make a really comfortable home for him somehow. As for poor Paunch! she hates him as much as she hates me, and never says a civil word to him.

"Paunch and I are great friends; we sit and shiver together in the chill blast of Miss Foster's displeasure, and 'a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' especially Paunch. He is a most earnest young man, Dad; all day long he is thinking of the influence he may be on others, and the result is that Tony, who never thinks about himself at all, makes far more impression when he tells a boy he's a silly young ass than Paunch would if he talked about ideals till Doomsday. It's very odd how the boys really care what Tony thinks; of course they don't say so, but any one can see it. Mr. Johns is awfully good at games, so the boys respect that. The other day I asked Mr. Hamilton, one of the pre's, if Tony ever gave them a 'pi-jaw' as they call it.

"He looked very funny for a minute, and then he said, 'I don't know any one I'd sooner go to than old Bruiser if I was in a very bad mess.' It wasn't an answer to my question, but it was enlightening all the same. Tony makes me think of those lines at the beginning of 'Stalky':

    "'For they taught us common sense,
    Tried to teach us common sense,
    Truth and God's own common sense,
    Which is more than knowledge.'
    

"I was reading 'Stalky' last night, a............