"Hardly worth while?" said Lowndes. "My dear boy, that's not very kind. I have always been fond of you, Ringrose, and for your own sake as well as on every other ground I should be exceedingly sorry to offend you. Things are looking up with the Company, you know, and I can't afford to quarrel with our future Secretary!"
And with that cunning unction he walked away laughing, but Harry knew there was no laughter in his heart, and that every word he had spoken was insincere. What then was the meaning? To keep friendly with him, doubtless; but why? And such were the possibilities of Gordon Lowndes, and such the imagination of Harry Ringrose, that the latter took his little boys back to the school with the very wildest and most far-fetched explanations surging through his brain.
In the hall he heard a strident voice raging in the schoolroom overhead. He could not help going a little way upstairs to discover whether anything serious was the matter. And outside the schoolroom door stood one of the biggest boys, crying bitterly, with his collar torn from its stud, and one ear and one cheek as crimson as though that side of his face had been roasted before a fire.
At one o'clock the whole school went for a walk before dinner, and it was then that Harry at last set eyes on the formidable Scrafton, as he came downstairs in his creaking shoes, with his snuff-box open in his hand, and his extraordinary head thrown back to take a pinch. There are some faces which one has to see many times before one knows them, as it were, by heart; there are others which one passes in the street with a shudder, and can never afterwards forget; and here was a face that would have haunted Harry Ringrose even though he had never seen it but this once.
A magnificent forehead was its one fine feature; the light blue eyes beneath were spoilt by their fiery rims, and yet they gleamed with a fierce humour and a keen intelligence which lent them distinction of a kind. These were the sole redeeming points. The rest was either cruel or unclean or both. The creature's skin was very smooth and yellow, and it shone with an unwholesome gloss. Abundant hair, of a dirty iron-grey, was combed back from the forehead without a parting, and gathered in unspeakable curls on the nape of a happily invisible neck. A long, lean nose, like a vulture's beak, overhung a grey moustache with a snuffy zone in the centre, and lost pinches of snuff lingered in a flowing beard of great length. The man wore a suit of pristine black, now brown with age and snuff, and Harry noticed a sallow gleam between his shoes and his trousers as he came creaking down the stairs. In warm weather he wore no socks.
"This is the new master of whom I spoke to you," said Mrs. Bickersteth, who was waiting in the hall to introduce Harry to Mr. Scrafton.
"That a master?" bellowed Scrafton. "Why, I thought it was a new boy!" And he let out a roar of laughter that left his blue eyes full of water; then he strode across the hall with a horrible hand out-stretched; the long nails had jagged, black rims, and in another moment Harry was shuddering from a clasp that was at once clammy and strong.
"What's your name?" asked Mr. Scrafton, grinning like a demon in Harry's face.
"Mr. Ringrose," said Mrs. Bickersteth.
"What name?" roared Scrafton. He had turned from Harry to the schoolmistress. Harry saw her quail, and he took the liberty of repeating his surname in a very distinct voice.