The ten-minutes bell sounded at this moment, and the boys ran upstairs again to finish dressing and say their prayers. For the last five minutes of these ten they were bound to be on their knees at their bedside, while Glanders patrolled the dormitory. But with care and discreet peeping through fingers it was possible to get through some neglected dressing during the devotional five minutes, and David, who was a good deal behindhand, buttoned his collar, put on his tie, and laced one boot without being detected.
Mr. Dutton was in an unusually docile mood during this hour from seven to eight, and it wanted little penetration on the part of his pupils, when they remembered the visit he had done the Head the honour to pay him last night, to guess the cause of that. David felt chagrin at the fact that he had been detained in the bath-room, and had not been able to take the dismembered yellow-back from the grate, to find out what made the Head so waxy, but there was no doubt that it was the Head who had made Mr. Dutton so mild. Indeed, it had often been a debated question as to which was really the worst, a caning or a proper “jaw” from the Head, for the hardiest were reduced to unwilling tears by the Head’s tongue, when he really chose to apply it, so convincing and dismal a picture could he paint of a boy’s satanic iniquity, and the inevitable ruin that such courses fashioned for him in this world and the next. But it was a point of honour not to cry at any application of the cane after you were twelve; kids might cry, but not elderly persons. The cane might break your hands, and make you set your teeth, but it was not allowable to let it break your spirit. But a “jaw” broke your spirit into smithereens, and no doubt that disintegrating process had happened to old Dubs. Anything in the way of construing was sufficient this morning, and the grammatical questions were mere child’s-play.
It was already ten minutes to eight, and the school sergeant, a whiskered veteran, who visited the different class-rooms during early school, with orders from the Head, and summonses for boys who had been reported, had already passed the museum door without coming in, and David’s heart rose. If Glanders had reported him, it was quite certain that the sergeant would have conveyed the summons that he was to go to the Head after chapel, to his class-room, and yet he had passed without delivering it. From time to time these remissions happened. Glanders occasionally forgot to report, even when she had promised it; sometimes even in the act of complaining, the stoniness of her bosom relented. Then, with a sinking of the heart, proportionally greater owing to its premature uplifting, there was a tap on the door, and the sergeant entered, saluting.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” he said to Mr. Dutton, handing him a small slip of blue paper; “but I forgot this as I went by.”
Mr. Dutton glanced at it.
“Blaize to go to the Head after chapel,” he announced, and David thought he detected a faint smile showing the malicious glee of a fellow-sufferer.
Chapel, usually tedious, was not long enough that morning, and the psalms, the lesson, the hymns, and the prayers passed in a flash. Ferrers, as they went out, administered spurious consolation.
“If you stick your hands in cold water,” he said, “it’ll numb them a bit. I remember, last winter, I held mine in the snow for five minutes, and it didn’t sting nearly so much.”
“And there’s such a sight of snow about in July, isn’t there!” said David bitterly.