SCHOOL DAYS
though he has scarcely five shillings left in his pocket and more than twenty miles to get home.
"Where to, sir?"
"Red Lion, Farringdon," says Tom, giving ostler a shilling.
"All right, sir. Red Lion, Jem," to the post-boy, and Tom rattles away toward home. At Farringdon, being known to the innkeeper, he gets that worthy to pay for the Oxford horses, and forward him in another chaise at once; and so the gorgeous young gentleman arrives at the paternal mansion, and Squire Brown looks rather blue at having to pay two-pound ten shillings for the posting expenses from Oxford. But the boy's intense joy at getting home, and the wonderful health he is in, and the good character he brings, and the brave stories he tells of Rugby, its doings and delights, soon mollify the squire, and three happier people didn't sit down to dinner that day in England (it is the boy's first dinner at six o'clock at home, great promotion, already) than the squire and his wife and Tom Brown at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.
