On the re-assembling of the school it became apparent that something had gone wrong.  Dr Skinner called the boys together, and with much pomp excommunicated Mrs Cross and Mrs Jones, by declaring their shops to be out of bounds.  The street in which the “Swan and Bottle” stood was also forbidden.  The vices of drinking and smoking, therefore, were clearly aimed at, and before prayers Dr Skinner spoke a few impressive words about the abominable sin of using bad language.  Ernest’s feelings can be imagined.

Next day at the hour when the daily punishments were read out, though there had not yet been time for him to have offended, Ernest Pontifex was declared to have incurred every punishment which the school provided for evil-doers.  He was placed on the idle list for the whole half year, and on perpetual detentions; his bounds were curtailed; he was to attend junior callings-over; in fact he was so hemmed in with punishments upon ever side that it was hardly possible for him to go outside the school gates.  This unparalleled list of punishments inflicted on the first day of the half year, and intended to last till the ensuing Christmas holidays, was not connected with any specified offence.  It required no great penetration therefore, on the part of the boys to connect Ernest with the putting Mrs Cross’s and Mrs Jones’s shops out of bounds.

Great indeed was the indignation about Mrs Cross who, it was known, remembered Dr Skinner himself as a small boy only just got into jackets, and had doubtless let him have many a sausage and mashed potatoes upon deferred payment.  The head boys assembled in conclave to consider what steps should be taken, but hardly had they done so before Ernest knocked timidly at the head-room door and took the bull by the horns by explaining the facts as far as he could bring himself to do so.  He made a clean breast of everything except about the school list and the remarks he had made about each boy’s character.  This infamy was more than he could own to, and he kept his counsel concerning it.  Fortunately he was safe in doing so, for Dr Skinner, pedant and more than pedant though he was, had still just sense enough to turn on Theobald in the matter of the school list.  Whether he resented being told that he did not know the characters of his own boys, or whether he dreaded a scandal about the school I know not, but when Theobald had handed him the list, over which he had expended so much pains, Dr Skinner had cut him uncommonly short, and had then and there, with more suavity than was usual with him, committed it to the flames before Theobald’s own eyes.

Ernest got off with the head boys easier than he expected.  It was admitted that the offence, heinous though it was, had been committed under extenuating circumstances; the frankness with which the culprit had confessed all, his evidently unfeigned remorse, and the fury with which Dr Skinner was pursuing him tended to bring about a reaction in his favour, as though he had been more sinned against than sinning.