“I am going to gratify your wish to be an example.”
“A gibbet! a gibbet” cried Larkins. “I’m to be turned off on the spot where the crime took place—a warning to all beholders. Only let me send home for old Neptune’s chain, if you please, sir—if you hang me in the combined watch-chains of the school, I fear they would give way and defeat the purposes of justice.”
They were by this time at the bridge. “Come in,” said Norman to his follower, as he crossed the entrance of the little shop, the first time he had ever been there. A little cringing shrivelled old man stood up in astonishment.
“Mr. May! can I have the pleasure, sir?”
“Mr. Ballhatchet, you know that it is contrary to the rules that there should be any traffic with the school without special permission?”
“Yes, sir—just nothing, sir—only when the young gentlemen come here, sir—I’m an old man, sir, and I don’t like not to oblige a young gentleman, sir,” pleaded the old man, in a great fright.
“Very likely,” said Norman, “but I am come to give you fair notice. I am not going to allow the boys here to be continually smuggling spirits into the school.”
“Spirits! bless you, sir, I never thought of no sich a thing! ‘Tis nothing in life but ginger-beer—very cooling drink, sir, of my wife’s making; she had the receipt from her grandmother up in Leicestershire. Won’t you taste a bottle, sir?” and he hastily made a cork bounce, and poured it out.
That, of course, was genuine, but Norman was “up to him,” in schoolboy phrase.
“Give me yours, Larkins.”