Then one group of masters and servants set to work to
sort the luggage which cumbered the platform, while others received it at
the hotel door, and distributed it to the various billets. Light was
scant, hands were not too numerous, and the work was not done without
some confusion. But it was done; and the tired workers went to their
beds, thankful for what was finished, and full of good hopes for the work
which was yet to be begun.
And the boys--how did they feel? As they stepped out from the railway
carriage into those bare, vasty corridors and curtainless dormitories,
did some little sense of desolateness in the new prospect temper its
excitement? Did some homesickness arise in the exile as he pondered on
the retirement and comfort of the "house" at Uppingham, and his
individual ownership of the separate cubicle, and the study which was
"his castle?" He was a unit now, not of a household, but of a camp.
Small blame to him if life seemed to have lost its landmarks, and things
round him to be "all nohow," as he sat down in some bare hall upon a
schoolfellow's book-box (wondering whether he should ever see his own),
to while away with a story-book the listless interval before bed-time,
under the niggard light of a smoking lamp, or a candle flickering in the
draught.
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