There could be no doubt that he knew his lessons as well as any one in the class, if not better, and he shone still more when Dally appealed to the natural intelligence of the boys by straying far away from the beaten and dusty path of the text books.  Whenever he had stirred them by some excursion of this kind and began to ask questions in order to find out how far they had followed him, Keith’s right hand was sure to shoot excitedly upwards in order to get him the coveted chance of answering.  And it seemed as if he could answer almost every question asked except a few that went so far beyond the bounds laid down for the class that the teacher deemed it fair to warn them that inability to answer would be no shame.  That was the kind of questions Dally generally reserved for Keith, and when Keith couldn’t answer, it didn’t console him very much that no one else could.  Once, when his hand went up as usual and, to his astonishment, he obtained the permission to answer, Keith, to his still greater astonishment, suddenly discovered that he had no answer to give.

“I thought so,” said Dally with a broad grin on his good-humoured face.  “Do you know what a fuzzy-wuzz is, Wellander?”

Keith shook his head, his face crimson with chagrin and humiliation as the whole class burst into anticipatory laughter.

“That’s a chap who wants to do all of it all the time,” explained Dally.

Keith did not quite see the point, but he kept his right arm a little more in check for a while after that, until one day the lesson was forgotten and history repeated itself.

“Now Keith is fuzzy-wuzzying again,” said Dally, and Keith thought he would sink through the floor.  His mind was quite made up never to ask permission to answer another question again, but that same afternoon, during the lesson in Swedish history, Dally dropped all questioning and asked Keith to explain to the class the main factors leading up to the Wars of Reformation—­which Keith spent twenty minutes in doing while all the rest of the class had to sit still listening to him.

IV

Keith could not remain isolated to the same extent as in the earlier schools.  Inevitable community sprang from similarity of sex and age alone.  In the same direction worked the system of teaching which called for the united attention of the entire class during every moment of the lesson.  It was impossible to form a part of the class without being in contact with all its other members.  The boy who read aloud or answered a question became subjected to the criticism or admiration of all the rest.  Rivalry in any field of study was just as likely to arise between two boys at different ends of the room as between those sitting side by side.  The spirit of Dally tended to assist this fusion of personalities in every way, and the boy who kept apart was sure sooner or later to run foul of his good-humoured but well-aimed sallies.  His attitude implied no tyranny, and he strove for no deadening conformity.  On the contrary, he always spoke of a strongly marked individuality as the object of all education, but he tried to develop it by fearless contact with others rather than by jealous withdrawal.