It was during the "Mother Cross row," as it was long styled among the
boys, that a remarkable phenomenon was witnessed at Roughborough. I mean
that of the head boys under certain conditions doing errands for their
juniors. The head boys had no bounds and could go to Mrs Cross's
whenever they liked; they actually, therefore, made themselves
go-betweens, and would get anything from either Mrs Cross's or Mrs
Jones's for any boy, no matter how low in the school, between the hours
of a quarter to nine and nine in the morning, and a quarter to six and
six in the afternoon. By degrees, however, the boys grew bolder, and the
shops, though not openly declared in bounds again, were tacitly allowed
to be so.
CHAPTER XLIV
I may spare the reader more details about my hero's school days. He
rose, always in spite of himself, into the Doctor's form, and for the
last two years or so of his time was among the praepostors, though he
never rose into the upper half of them. He did little, and I think the
Doctor rather gave him up as a boy whom he had better leave to himself,
for he rarely made him construe, and he used to send in his exercises or
not, pretty much as he liked.
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