“Oh, is he really?” he asked. “How awfully ripping. Even after——”
He stopped, knowing that his father would not understand.
“Even after what?” said he.
David blushed.
“Oh, it was nothing,” he said. “I only was going to say after missing that catch. But—but I suppose he would think that didn’t matter. Though, of course, he’s awfully keen for the school to win the Eagles match.”
He left his father at the Head’s house, and walked back across the field to the museum class-room, where he was already late for preparation, as the lock-up bell had sounded ten minutes before. He knew quite well that his father was fond of him, and was anxious about his well-being, but somehow the serious talks froze him up, and he could not feel all the things he knew he was expected to feel. It was so odd not knowing that fellows swore when they jammed their fingers in doors, or were suddenly annoyed at anything. Probably grown-up people did not, but that was because they were grown-up. He was afraid it was a distinct relief that the “jaw” was over, and on the top of that, in a way that he did not understand, he was sorry he was glad. And then suddenly he swept all those puzzling regrets off his mind, and he became alertly and absolutely thirteen again.
Walking across the field towards him came Mr. Dutton, who, on his approach, as David’s extremely observant eye noted, put something in his coat-pocket in an interesting and furtive manner. Without doubt he had been smoking his pipe, as he came from common-room, a thing which all the school knew was forbidden to masters in the school precincts, for fear of the bad example to the boys. This was interesting; it might lead to something; and David, knowing that the fact that he had been walking with his father neutralised all possible penalties for being late for lock-up, advanced timidly, as if he thought he was detected in some breach of rules.
Mr. Dutton had just come out of meat-tea with the other masters, and was feeling autocratic. He called David in a peremptory and abrupt manner.
“Come here, Blaize,” he said.
Now Mr. Dutton was not at all a nice young man, and his unpopularity in the school was perfectly justified. He had favourites, usually pink, pretty little boys, whose misdoings he treated with leniency, while those who were not distinguished with his regard he visited with the hundred petty tyrannies which his mastership gave him the opportunity of exercising. He also had an effective trick of sarcastic speech which is an unfair weapon to employ to those who are not in a position to answer back. And of all those under his charge there was none whom he so cordially disliked as David, who returned the aversion with uncommon heartiness. Mr. Dutton was often not quite sure whether David, under a polite demeanour, was not “cheeking” him (though he need not have had any doubt whatever on the matter), and he was also aware that all the impositions which he set the boy did not make him in the least an object of reverence. However, in a small way, he could make himself burdensome.