“Silence!” exclaimed the instructor, banging a ruler on his desk. “I will permit no levity!”
The boys filed to their seats more than usually silent. The professor opened his book, and some one sneezed. It was a perfectly natural and unavoidable sneeze, yet it set off the mine that had been smouldering in the professor’s breast for many days.
“Stop that!” he cried. “If I find that any more of that abominable powder has been scattered about I will, on my own responsibility, personally chastise the guilty student!”
He paused and looked about. Suspiciously he sniffed the air, but there was none of the powder in evidence.
“It was well for the entire class—the entire class I repeat,” he said, “that there is none. Now we will proceed!”
He was unusually severe that day. The slightest slip was noticed, and the culprit was made to sit down with a lesson to write out. Scarcely one escaped, and when an error was made the professor, instead of correcting it in a gentle manner, referred sarcastically to the “imbecility” of the lad, and, in bullying language, demanded to know where he had received his early instruction.
There were murmurs of discontent. Tom flushed angrily when he was needlessly insulted, and there came a look on his face that made Jack Fitch think:
“Tom won’t stand much more of this. There’ll be a blow-up pretty soon, and I’ll be glad of it. So will the rest of the class. Tom has something up his sleeve against Skeel, and the sooner it comes out the better. I’m going to sit tight and watch. It’s time for an eruption!”
The recitation went on, from bad to worse. Student after student was rigged and browbeaten, until even those who had come to class well prepared felt their knowledge slipping from them, and they floundered, and made all sorts of wild answers and impossible guesses as to the right translation.