“Beg your pardon, sir,” he said to Mr. Dutton, handing him a small slip of blue paper; “but I forgot this as I went by.”
“Blaize to go to the Head after chapel,” he announced, and David thought he detected a faint smile showing the malicious glee of a fellow-sufferer.
Chapel, usually tedious, was not long enough that morning, and the psalms, the lesson, the hymns, and the prayers passed in a flash. Ferrers, as they went out, administered spurious consolation.
“If you stick your hands in cold water,” he said, “it’ll numb them a bit. I remember, last winter, I held mine in the snow for five minutes, and it didn’t sting nearly so much.”
“And there’s such a sight of snow about in July, isn’t there!” said David bitterly.
“All right, then,” he said, feeling slightly hurt. “And you’ve got your three cuts from Bags, too, haven’t you? I bet Bags lays on.”
A minute afterwards he was in the awful presence. Even as he entered he heard the jingle of keys, and when he advanced to the table, where its occupant was looking vexed, he saw that the fatal middle drawer was already open. That it could have been opened for any other reason did not strike him; he supposed that his case was already judged.
For the moment the Head seemed unaware of his presence, and continued to read the letter that apparently annoyed him.
“Pish!” he said at length, in a dreadful voice, and, looking up, as he tore it in fragments, saw David.
“Ah, Blaize,” he said, “I sent for you—yes, I want you to answer me a question or two.”
This looked as unpromising as possible. The drawer was already open, but it seemed that a “jaw” was coming first. Why couldn’t he cane him and have done with it, thought the dejected David.
“Question one,” he said. “Is it the case that my daughters have incurred the wrath of the first form?”
David’s head reeled at the thickness of the troubles.
“Good. Question two, which you need not answer if any sense of honour forbid you. Why have they deserved this—er disgrace? And why do you join in inflicting it?”
David drew a long breath; there was no sense of honour that would be violated in telling the Head, but to do so was like taking a high header into unknown waters, when it required all the courage you were possessed of to go off a low board into four feet of familiar swimming-bath.