"Now, don't be cheeky. In what place did he whack you?"
"Why, in his class-room, of course," I retorted. "Where do you think he'd do it? In the High Street?" As I said this I was seized with a nervous fit of giggling.
"Look here, sonny," said Kepple-Goddard, rapping on the table, "you're going the right way towards getting a prefects' whacking for contempt of court."
Stanley raised his hand for silence.
"Why did he whack you?"
"Because he couldn't get my sum right."
Here Banana-Skin, a large and overbearing prefect, so called because of his yellowish complexion, burst in with the skill of a prosecuting counsel:
"Oh, then, are we to understand that you were whacked unjustly and had reason for vindictiveness?"
"Go easy, Banana-Skin," protested Stanley. "Don't bully the kid."
"But," I said, beginning to feel that horrid array of tears mobilising again, "that was some time before he gave me the lines—"