"Nurse Turner would not tell, and so we have no right to speculate."
"That's true.… I'll confine myself to what we overheard. Now when a chit of a child stands up and hurls abuse of that kind at a woman well old enough to be her mother, two things have to be done. … We must get at the root of this deterioration in Corona, but first of all she must be punished. The question is, Which of us will undertake it? You have the natural right, of course—"
Brother Bonaday winced.
"No, no—" he protested.
"I should have said, the natural obligation. But you are frail just now, and I doubt if you are equal to it."
"Copas!… You're not proposing to whip her?" Brother Copas chuckled grimly. But that the child was in the next room, possibly listening, he might have laughed aloud.
"Do they whip girls?" he asked. "I used to find the whipping of boys disgusting enough.… I had an assistant master once, a treasure, who remained with me six years, and then left for no reason but that I could not continue to pay him. I liked him so much that one day, after flogging a boy in hot blood, and while (as usual) feeling sick with the revulsion of it, I then and there resolved that, however much this trade might degrade me, this Mr. Simcox should be spared the degradation whilst in my employ. I went to his class-room and asked to have a look at his punishment-book. He answered that he kept none. `But,' said I, 'when you first came to me didn't I give you a book, and expressly command you, whenever you punished a boy, to write an entry, giving the boy's name, the nature of his offence, and the number of strokes with which you punished him?' 'You did, sir,' said Simcox, 'and I have lost it.' 'Lost it!' said I. 'You but confirm me in my decision that henceforth, when any boy in this school needs caning, I will do it with my own hands.' 'Sir,' he replied, 'you have done that for these five years. Forgive me, but I was pleased to find that you never asked to see the book; for I really couldn't bring myself to flog a boy merely for the sake of writing up an entry.' In short, that man was a born schoolmaster, and almost dispensed with punishments, even the slightest."
"He ruled the boys by kindness, I suppose?"
"He wasn't quite such a fool."
"Then what was his secret?"