'Aye, to see what is to be done,—ship—chaplaincy, curacy, literature, selling sermons at five shillings each,—what not. I am no longer master of Northwold school!' He strove to speak carelessly, but bending over his packing, thrust down the clothes with desperate blows.
Louis sat down, too much dismayed to utter a word.
'One morning's work in the conclave,' said James, with the same assumed ease. 'Here's their polite reprimand, which they expected me to put up with,—censuring all my labour, forbidding Sunday-classes, accusing me of partiality and cruelty, with a lot of nonsense about corporal punishment and dignity. I made answer, that if I were master at all, I must be at liberty to follow my own views, otherwise I would resign; and, would you believe it, they snapped at the offer—they thought it highly desirable! There's an end of it.'
'Impossible!' cried Louis, casting his eye over the reprimand, and finding that the expressions scarcely warranted James's abstract of them. 'You must have mistaken!'
'Do you doubt that?' and James threw to him a sheet where, in Richardson's clerkly handwriting, the trustees of King Edward's Northwold Grammar School formally accepted the resignation of the Reverend James Roland Frost Dynevor.
'They cannot be so hasty! Did not Mr. Calcott call to gee you?'
'An old humbug!'
'I'll go and see him this instant. Something may be done.'
'No,' said James, holding him down by the shoulder, 'I will not be degraded by vain solicitations.'
'This must be that wretched Ramsbotham!' exclaimed Louis. 'Oh, Jem! I little thought he had so much power to injure you.'