Isabel was fully alive now, and almost as vehement as her husband, in her complaints against his many foes. There was no lack of sympathy here, indeed, there might be rather too much, for she did not afford the softening influence that James had hitherto found at home.
'Well, Jem,' said Louis, at last, 'I think you should keep your hands off the boys.'
'You are not bitten with the nonsense about personal dignity and corporal punishment?' said James.
'By no means. I have an infinite respect for the great institution of flogging; but a solemn execution is one thing, a random stroke another.'
'Theories are very good things till you come to manage two score dunces without sense or honour. There is only one sort of appeal to their feelings that tells.'
'Maybe so, but I have my doubts whether you are the man to make it.'
Louis was sorry he had so spoken, for a flush of pain came up in James's face at the remembrance of what Fitzjocelyn had long ago forgotten—a passionate blow given to deter him from a piece of wilful mischief, in which he was persisting for the mere amusement of provoking. It stood out among all other varieties of cuff, stroke, and knock, by the traces it had left, by Mrs. Frost's grief at it, and the forgiveness from the Earl, and it had been the most humiliating distress of James's childhood. It humbled him even now, and he answered—
'You may be right, Louis; I may be not sufficiently altered since I was a boy. I have struck harder than I intended more than once, and I have told the boys so.'
'I am sure, if they had any generosity, they would have been touched with your amends,' cried Isabel.
'After all, a schoolmaster's life does not tend to mend the temper,' concluded James, sighing, and passing his hand over his forehead.