TOM BROWN'S
Tom not a little until his friend explained that they were climbing irons and showed their use. A cricket-bat and small fishing-rod stood up in one corner.
This was the residence of East and another boy in the same form, and had more interest for Tom than Windsor Castle or any other residence in the British Isles. For was he not about to become the joint owner of a similar home, the first place which he could call his own? One's own! What a charm there is in the words! How long it takes boy and man to find out their worth! How fast most of us hold on to them!—faster and more jealously the nearer we are to that general home into which we can take nothing, but must go naked as we came into the world. When shall we learn that he who multiplieth possessions multiplieth troubles, and that the one single use of things which we call our own is that they may be his who hath need of them?
"And shall I have a study like this, too?" said Tom.
"Yes, of course, you'll be chummed with some fellow on Monday, and you can sit here till then."
"What nice places!"
"They're well enough," answered East, patronizingly, "only uncommon cold at nights, sometimes. Gower—that's my chum—and I make a fire with paper on the floor after supper generally, only that makes it so smoky."
"But there's a big fire out in the passage," said Tom.
"Precious little good we get out of that, though," said East; "Jones, the præpostor, has the study at the fire end, and he has rigged up an iron rod and green baize curtain across the passage, which he draws at night and sits there with his door open, so he gets all the fire and hears if we come out of our studies after eight or make a noise. However, he's taken to sitting in the fifth-form room lately, so we do get a bit of fire now sometimes; only keep a sharp lookout that he don't catch you behind his curtain when he comes down—that's all."
A quarter-past one now struck, and the bell began tolling for
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