“You!” said Somers, turning contemptuously in that direction; “who are you?”
The general titter which these words caused made Kenrick furious, and he cried out angrily—
“It is against the opinion of the majority of the school.”
“We shall see,” said Somers, with stinging sang froid; “meanwhile, you may sit down, and let the majority of the school speak for themselves, otherwise you may be requested to occupy a still more prominent position. I shall have something to say to you presently.”
“Let’s rescue him,” said Kenrick, springing forward, and several fellows stirred in answer to the appeal; but Macon, seizing hold of Tracy with one arm, and Mackworth with the other, thrust them both down on the floor, and Danvers, catching hold of Kenrick, swung him over the form, and pinned him there. The general laugh with which this proceeding was received showed that only a small handful of the school were really opposed to the monitors, and that most boys thoroughly concurred with them, and held them to be in the right. So Macon quietly boxed Jones’s ears, since Jones was making a noise, and then told him and the others that they might return to their places.
Crimsoned all over with shame and anger, Kenrick sat down, and Somers proceeded to administer to Harpour a most severe caning. That worthy quite meant to stretch to the utmost his powers of endurance, and made several scornful remarks after each of the first blows. But Somers had no intention to let him off too easily; each sneer was followed by a harder cut, and the remarks were very soon followed by a silent but significant wince. It was not until a writhe had been succeeded by a sob, and a sob by a howl, that Somers said to him—
“Now you may go.”
And Harpour did go to his seat, in an agony of mingled pain and shame. He had boasted repeatedly that he would never take a thrashing from anyone; but he had taken it, and succumbed to it, and that too in the presence of the whole school. He was tremendously ashamed; he never forgot the scene, and determined never to lose an opportunity of revenging it.
The school felt it to be an act of simple justice, and that the punishment was richly deserved. They looked on in stern silence, and those lower boys who had in the morning determined to interfere, gazed with some discomfiture upon their champion’s fall.
“And now, Master Kenrick, you stand here—what, no!—Stand here, sir.”