David’s young skin flushed with pleasure, and then went white again with a resolution that frightened himself.
“I—I’ve done lots of things you don’t know about, sir,” he said. “I don’t think it’s right you should think me good—I’ve——”
The Head stopped, and David’s heart sank into his boots. What an ass he had been to say that! Why not have received this handsome tribute, however undeserved, without disturbing the misplaced faith that prompted it? And yet he knew that he had done it deliberately and because he had to.
“Do you wish to tell me about them?” asked the Head. But his voice was still quiet and kind. David seemed to himself to be going mad. He just heard his voice in a quaking whisper say:
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, David, I don’t want to hear about them,” said this astounding man, “though I thank you for wishing to tell me. I feel sure you have broken rules of school often enough, but I don’t think you have broken rules of character. They are much more important, though school rules have got to be kept as well.”
Suddenly his grip on David’s shoulder tightened, and his eye fixed itself on the back of a small boy who was sitting on the wire railing at the edge of the field, unconscious of their approach.
“Ferrers Minor, I think,” he called out in an awful voice.
The Head thought right, and Ferrers Minor presented his startled and dejected countenance.
“Did you, or did you not, know the rule about sitting on the railings?” demanded the Head.