Study." Their learning was profound, for they were taught a mysterious language called Latin, and another, even more mysterious, called "Alzeber" (or something like that). The Second Class, conducted by Miss Mary—formidable, but a good sort—in a corner of the schoolroom, did not fly so high. They studied history and geography, and were addicted to a fearsome form of parlour-game called "Mentalarithmetic," which involved much shrieking of answers to highly impossible questions about equally dividing seventeen apples among five boys. Pip and Pipette occupied a humble position in the Third Class, where they soon developed a fervent admiration for pretty Miss Amelia, who was always smiling, always daintily dressed, and charmingly inaccurate and casual. On Thursday afternoons the whole school assembled in the Music Room. Here faded Miss Arabella thumped mechanically on the piano, [Pg 35] while the pupils of Wentworth House School chanted an inexplicable and interminable ditty entitled "Doh-ray-me-fah." The words of this canticle were printed on a canvas sheet upon the wall, and the method of inculcation was somewhat peculiar. Mr. Pocklington, taking his stand beside the sheet, would lay the tip of his little white wand upon the word "Doh" printed at the bottom. Miss Arabella would strike a note upon the piano, and the school would reproduce the same with no uncertain sound, sustaining it by one prolonged howl until the white wand slid up to "Ray," an example which the vocalists would attempt to follow to the best of their ability, and with varying degrees of success. Having rallied and concentrated his forces on "Ray," Mr. Pocklington would advance to "Me," and then to "Fah," the effects achieved by the elder male choristers, whose voices were reaching the cracking stage, as the scale approached the topmost "Doh," being as surprising as they were various. [Pg 35] The hour always concluded with a sort of musical steeplechase. The white wand would skip incontinently from Doh to Fah, and from Me to Soh, the singers following after—faint yet pursuing. At the end of three minutes, the field having tailed out, so to speak, every note in the gamut was being sung, fortissimo, by at [Pg 36] least one member of the choir, and the total effect was more suggestive of a home for lost dogs than an academy for the sons and daughters of gentlemen. [Pg 36] Our friends enjoyed this diversion hugely. Pipette, who could carol like a lark, hopped from note to note with an agility only equalled
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