Part -2 Our Mutual Friend

by Charles Dickens in English Fiction Stories

The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a book—the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory Establishment in which very much that is never unlearned is learned without and before book—was a ...Read Moreloft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was op-pressive and disagreeable it was crowded, noisy, and confus-ing half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of wak-ing stupefaction the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours. Read Less