Nevertheless, he was far from happy. Dr Skinner was much too like his
father. True, Ernest was not thrown in with him much yet, but he was
always there; there was no knowing at what moment he might not put in an
appearance, and whenever he did show, it was to storm about something. He
was like the lion in the Bishop of Oxford's Sunday story--always liable
to rush out from behind some bush and devour some one when he was least
expected. He called Ernest "an audacious reptile" and said he wondered
the earth did not open and swallow him up because he pronounced Thalia
with a short i. "And this to me," he thundered, "who never made a false
quantity in my life." Surely he would have been a much nicer person if
he had made false quantities in his youth like other people. Ernest
could not imagine how the boys in Dr Skinner's form continued to live;
but yet they did, and even throve, and, strange as it may seem, idolised
him, or professed to do so in after life. To Ernest it seemed like
living on the crater of Vesuvius.
He was himself, as has been said, in Mr Templer's form, who was snappish,
but not downright wicked, and was very easy to crib under.
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