I could not resist the temptation of looking at it, and no sooner had I done so than I found it gave at a glance the translation it used to take me an hour to get at with the dictionary.

So I began to use the "crib" regularly; and thus, getting my lessons quickly done, I gradually began to relapse into my habits of dawdling.
Instead of preparing my lessons steadily, I now began to put off preparation till the last moment, and then galloped them off as best I could.

Instead of writing my exercises carefully, I drew skeletons on the blotting-paper; instead of learning off my tenses, I read _Robinson Crusoe_ under the desk, and trusted to my next-door neighbour to prompt me when my turn came.
For a time my broken resolutions did not effect any apparent change in my position in the classes or in the eyes of my masters.

I was what Evans (the boy who lent me the "crib") called lucky.

I was called on to translate just the passages I happened to have got off, or was catechised on the declensions of my pet verb, and so kept up appearances.
But that sort of thing could not go on for ever, and one day my exposure took place.
I had dawdled away my time the evening previously with one thing and another, always intending to set to work, but never doing so.