"Sit down, Cupper!"
"But, please, sir; please, sir!"
"Sit down!" and Mr. Wriford turns again to the blackboard. He is quite aware, though he cannot see, what is happening. He knows that Cupper has left his place and is approaching him with uplifted hand and persistent "Please, sir!" He knows that Cupper is close behind him and, from the laughter, that doubtless he is misbehaving immediately behind his back. He turns and catches Cupper with fingers extended from his nose. He does not know whether to pretend he has not seen it, or how, if he should not overlook it, to deal with it. His face works while he tries to decide. Cupper should have been warned. Cupper is not. Cupper's fat face grins impudently, and Cupper says: "Please, sir."
"Go and sit down," says Mr. Wriford, trying not to speak miserably, trying to speak sternly.
"But, please, sir!"
And thereupon, as hard as he can hit, stinging his own hand with the force of the blow, putting into it all he has suffered in this room during the week, Mr. Wriford hits Master Cupper so that there is a tolerable interval in which Master Cupper reels somewhere into the middle of next month before Master Cupper can so much as howl.
Then Master Cupper howls. Master Cupper, hand to face, opens his mouth to an enormous cavern and discharges therefrom four separate emotions in one immense, shattering, wordless blare of terror and of fury, of anguish and of surprise. Scarcely all the boys shouting together could have surpassed this roar of the stricken Cupper, and they sit aghast, and Mr. Wriford stands aghast, while tremendously it comes bellowing out of the Cupper throat. Then bawls Cupper: "I'll tell Mr. Pennyquick!" and out and away he charges, roaring through playground and into house as he goes as roars a rocket into the night. Fainter and more distant comes the roar, then, true to its rocket character, and to the consternation of those who listen, culminates in a muffled explosion of sound and in a moment comes roaring back again pursued by Mr. Pennyquick who also roars and drives it before him with blows from a cane.
Woe is Cupper! Cupper, for appreciation of this astounding sequel, must be followed as, hand to face, from assistant-master to Headmaster bellowing he goes. Blindly the stricken Cupper charges through the study door, slips on the mat, and blindly charges headlong into Mr. Pennyquick.
Then is the explosion that comes muffled to the listening schoolroom. First Cupper, shot head first into Mr. Pennyquick's waistcoat, knows that his head is lavishly anointed with strongly smelling medicine which Mr. Pennyquick is pouring into a tumbler from a very large medicine bottle labelled "Three Star (old);" next that his unwounded cheek and ear have suffered an earthquake compared with which that received by their fellows from Mr. Wriford was in the nature of a caress; next that with a bottle and a broken glass he is rolling on the floor; then, most horrible of all, that Mr. Pennyquick is springing round the room bellowing: "WHERE CANE? WHERE CANE? WHERE CANE?"
There is then a pandemonic struggle between Mr. Pennyquick, a cupboard, a cataract of heterogeneous articles which pour out of it upon him, and a bashful cane which refuses to emerge; and there is finally on the part of Master Cupper a ghastly realisation of his personal concern in this terrifying struggle and the part for which he is cast on its termination. Invigorated thereby, up springs Master Cupper, bawling, and plunges for the door, and simultaneously out comes the cane, and on comes Mr. Pennyquick, bawling, and plunges after him. Master Cupper takes three appalling cuts of the cane in the embarrassment of getting through the doorway, two at each turn of the passages, a shower in the death-trap offered by the open playground, and comes galloping, a hand to each side of his face, into the shuddering schoolroom, bawling: "Save me! Save me!" and leading by the length of the cane Mr. Pennyquick, with flaming face and streaming gown, who cuts at him with bellows of: "FLOG you! FLOG you!"