ten minutes past nine
shouted Jock , with agreeable humour , but the last sight Moossy had of Muirtown was Speug standing on a luggage-barrow and waving farewell . A LAST RESOURCE That the Rector should be ill and absent from his classes from time to time was quite in the order of things , because he was a scholar and absent-minded to a degree -- going to bed in the morning , and being got out of bed in rather less than time for his work ; eating when it occurred to him , but preferring , on the whole , not to eat at all ; wearing very much the same clothes summer and winter , and if he added a heavy top-coat , more likely putting it on in the height of summer and going without it when there were ten degrees of frost . It was not for his scholarship , but for his peculiarities , that the school loved him ; not because he edited a `` Cæsar '' and compiled a set of Latin exercises , for which perfectly unnecessary and disgusting labours the school hated him , but because he used to arrive at ten minutes past nine , and his form was able to jeer at Bulldog 's boys as they hastened into their class-room with much discretion at one minute before the hour . Because he used to be so much taken up with a happy phrase in Horace that he would forget the presence of his class , and walk up and down before the fireplace , chortling aloud ; and because sometimes he was so hoarse that he could only communicate with the class by signs , which they unanimously misunderstood . Because he would sometimes be absent for a whole week , and his form was thrown in with another , with the result of much enjoyable friction , and an almost perfect neglect of work . He was respected and never was annoyed , not even by ruffians like Howieson , because everyone knew that the Rector was an honourable gentleman , with all his eccentric ways , and the _ Muirtown Advertiser _ had a leader every spring on the achievements of his scholars .