He ran up to the playground as hard as he could tear to work off the excitement of his spirits, and get rid of the inward turmoil. On a grass bank at the far end of it he saw two boys seated, whom he knew at once to be Henderson and Kenrick, who, for a wonder, were reading, not green novels, but Shakespeare!
“I’ll tell you what it is, Henderson,” he said; “I can’t and I won’t stand this any longer. It’s the last detention breaks the boy’s back. I hate Saint Winifred’s, I hate Dr Lane, I hate Robertson, and I hate, hate, hate Paton!” he said, stamping angrily.
“Hooroop!” said Henderson; “so the patient Evson is on fire at last. Tell it not to Dubbs.”
“Why, Walter, what’s all this about?” asked Kenrick.
“Why, Ken,” said Walter, more quietly, “here’s a history of my life: Greek grammar, lines, detention, caning—caning, detention, lines, Greek grammar. I’m sick of it; I can’t and I won’t stand it any more.”
“Whether,” spouted Henderson, from the volume on his knee—
“‘Whether ’twere nobler for the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.
And by opposing end them!’”
“End them I will,” said Walter; “somehow, I’ll pay him out, depend upon it.”
“Recte si possis si non quocunque modo,” said Somers, the head of the school, whose fag Walter was, and who, passing by at the moment, caught the last sentence; “what is the excitement among you small boys?”
“The old story—pitching into Paton,” said Kenrick indifferently, and rather contemptuously; for he was a protégé of Somers, and felt annoyed that he should see Walter’s unreasonable display, the more so as Somers had asked him already, “why he was so much with that idle new fellow who was always being placed lag in his form?”