The arms of the class went up. At the miserable master’s nod, the shrill chorus arose: ‘Bradley Headstone!’
‘No?’ cried Riderhood. ‘You don’t mean it? Headstone! Why, that’s in a churchyard. Hooroar for another turn!’
Another tossing of arms, another nod, and another shrill chorus:
‘Bradley Headstone!’
‘I’ve got it now!’ said Riderhood, after attentively listening, and internally repeating: ‘Bradley. I see. Chris’en name, Bradley sim’lar to Roger which is my own. Eh? Fam’ly name, Headstone, sim’lar to Riderhood which is my own. Eh?’
Shrill chorus. ‘Yes!’
‘Might you be acquainted, learned governor,’ said Riderhood, ‘with a person of about your own heighth and breadth, and wot ’ud pull down in a scale about your own weight, answering to a name sounding summat like Totherest?’
With a desperation in him that made him perfectly quiet, though his jaw was heavily squared; with his eyes upon Riderhood; and with traces of quickened breathing in his nostrils; the schoolmaster replied, in a suppressed voice, after a pause: ‘I think I know the man you mean.’
‘I thought you knowed the man I mean, learned governor. I want the man.’
With a half glance around him at his pupils, Bradley returned: