I took advantage of the permission to see my friends by requesting the presence of Smith very frequently. But as the Henniker generally thought fit to sit in my room at the same time, I didn't get as much good out of my chum as I might have done. I heard he had had a very smart flogging for his share of that eventful night's proceedings, and that another was being saved up for me when I got well.
It was quite a melancholy day for me when the doctor pronounced me convalescent, and said I might resume my ordinary duties. It was announced to me at my first appearance in school, that on account of my delinquencies I was on the "strict silence" rule for the rest of the term, that my bed was removed to the other dormitory, and that I was absolutely forbidden to hold any further communication, either by word or gesture, with my friend Smith.
Thus cheerfully ended my first term at Stonebridge House.
HOW THINGS CAME TO A CRISIS AT STONEBRIDGE HOUSE.
A year passed, and found us at the end of it the same wretched, spiritless boys as ever. Stonebridge House had become no more tolerable, the Henniker had grown no less terrible, and our fellow "backward and troublesome boys" were just as unpleasant as they had been. No new boys had come to give us a variety, and no old boys had left. Except for the one fact that we were all of us a year older, everything was precisely the same as it had been at the time of the adventure related in my last chapter. But that one year makes a good deal of difference. When Smith and I slid down the water-pipe a year ago we were comparatively new friends, now we had grown to love one another like brothers. When the Henniker, on the same occasion, put an end to our scheme of escape, we had endured her persecutions but three months, now we had endured them for fifteen. A great deal of secret working may go on in a fellow's mind during a year, and in that way the interval _had_ wrought a change, for we were a good deal more to one another, Smith and I, and a good deal more desperate at our hard lot, both of us, than we had been a year ago.
It had been a miserable time. My holidays alone with my uncle had been almost as cheerless as my schooldays at Stonebridge House with Miss Henniker. If it hadn't been for Smith I do believe I should have lost every vestige of spirit. But happily he gave me no chance of falling into that condition. He seemed always on the verge of some explosion. Now it was against Hawkesbury, now against the Henniker, now against Mr Ladislaw, and now against the whole world generally, myself included. I had a busy time of it holding him in.