“Oh! oh! turn him out for his bad pun,” said Henderson, hitting him with a pellet of bread, for which offence he immediately received “fifty lines” from the master at the other end of the table.
“Don’t abuse Paton,” said a boy named Daubeny, which name Henderson had long ago contracted into Dubbs. “I always found him a capital master to be under, and really very kind.”
“Oh, you—yes,” answered Kenrick; “if we were all gifted with your mouselike stillness in school, my dear old Dubbs—”
“And your metallic capacity of grind, my dear old Dubbs,” added Henderson.
“And your ostrich-like digestion of crabbed rules, my dear old Dubbs; why, then,” said Kenrick, “we should all be boys after Paton’s heart.”
“Or Paton’s pattern,” suggested Henderson; so it was now Kenrick’s turn to shudder at a miserable attempt at a pun, and return Henderson’s missile, whereupon he got a hundred lines, which made him pull a very long face.
“Who’s to be your tutor, Evson?” he asked after this interlude.
“I suppose you’re going to pick him to pieces, now,” said Daubeny, smiling; “don’t you believe half they say of him, Evson.”
“Oh, if you’re sharp, and successful, and polite, and gentlemanly, and jolly, and all that sort of thing, he’ll like you very much, and be exceedingly kind to you; but if you are lazy, or mischievous, or stupid, or at all a pickle, he’ll ignore you, snub you, won’t speak to you. I wish you’d been in the same pupil-room with me.”
“Depends on who he is, O virtuous Dubbs,” said Henderson. “His end shall be ‘pieces,’ as Punch says, if he deserves it.”