His instructor looked hot with passion.
“But really, now I think of it,” chimed in the now enraptured widow, “a very serious alarm has seized me. Suppose that the piece of wood, so nicely planted in this damp clay, were to take root and throw out fibres. Gracious me! only suppose that you should begin to vegetate. I do declare that you look quite green about the eyes already!”
“Mercy me!” whispered the wag, “if he should grow up, he’ll certainly turn to a plane tree; for really, he is a very plain man.”
The wielder of the ruler gave a tremendous wriggle with the whole body, which proved as ineffectual as it was violent.
“But don’t you think, Ralph,” said his tormentor, “as the evening is drawing in, that something should be done for the poor gentleman; he will most certainly take cold if he remain here all night; couldn’t you and your school-fellows contrive to build a sort of hut over him? I am sure I should be very happy to help to carry the boughs—if the man won’t go to the house, the house must go to the man.”
“What a fine cock-shy he would make!” said Master Blubberlips.
“O, I should so like to see it,” said the lady. “It will be the first time he has been made shy in his life.”
He was certainly like an Indian bound to the stake, and made to suffer mental torture—but he did not bear it with an Indian’s equanimity. As a few stragglers had been drawn to the funny scene, and more might be expected, I, and I only, of all the spectators, began to feel some pity for him; the more especially, as I heard a stout, grinning chaw-bacon say to the baker’s boy of the village, who asked him what was the matter, “Whoy, Jim, it ben’t nothink less than Frenchman’s usherman, ha’ drawn all Thickenham common on his’n left leg for a stocking loike.”
“Come,” thought I, “it’s quite time, after that, for the honour of the academy, to beat a retreat, or we shall be beaten hollow by this heavy-shod clodpole. Mr Riprapton,” said I, “I don’t bear you any malice—but I recollect my wager. If I extricate you out of the difficulty, will you own that I have won it?”
“Gladly,” said he, very sorrowfully.