Aunt Betsey soon sent me to Doctor Strong’s excellent school at Canterbury.  It was decorously ordered on a sound system, with an appeal in everything to the honour and good faith of the boys.  We all felt that we had a part in the management of the place, and learnt with a good will, desiring to do it credit.  We had noble games out of hours, and plenty of liberty, and the whole plan of the school was as superior to that of Salem House as can be imagined.  I soon became warmly attached to the place, the teachers, and the boys, and in a little while the Murdstone and Grinsby life became so strange that I hardly believed in it.  Of course I wrote to Peggotty, relating my experiences, and how my aunt had taken me under her care, and returning the half guinea I had borrowed, and Peggotty answered promptly, but although she expressed herself as glad in my gladness, I could see that she did not take quite kindly to my Aunt as yet.

The days glide swiftly on.  I am higher in the school,—­I am growing great in Latin verse, think dancing school a tiresome affair, and neglect the laces of my boots.  Doctor Strong refers to me publicly as a promising young scholar, at which my aunt remits me a guinea by the next post.

The shade of a young butcher crosses my path.  He is the terror of Doctor Strong’s young gentlemen, whom he publicly disparages.  He names individuals (myself included) whom he could undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him.  He waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls challenges after me in the streets.  For these reasons, I resolve to fight the butcher.

We meet by appointment with a select audience.  Soon, I don’t know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is, but after a bloody tangle and tussle in the trodden grass, feeling very queer about the head, I awake, and augur justly that the victory is not mine.  I am taken home in a sad plight, to have beef-steaks put to my eyes, and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and find a great white puffy place on my upper lip, and for several days I remain in the house with a green shade over my eyes, and yet feeling that I did right to fight the butcher.

I change more and more, and now I am the head boy.  I wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed coat.  I am seventeen, and am smitten with a violent passion for the eldest Miss Larkins, who is about thirty.  She amuses herself with me as with a new toy, wears my ring for a season, and then announces her engagement to a Mr. Chestle.  I am terribly dejected for a week or two, then I rally, become a boy once more, fight the butcher again, gloriously defeat him, and feel better,—­and soon my school days draw to a close.

My aunt and I had many grave deliberations on the calling to which I should devote myself, but could come to no conclusion, as I had no particular liking that I could discover, for any profession.  So my aunt proposed that while I was thinking the matter over, I take a little trip, a breathing spell, as it were.