“What will uncle say?”
And as I sat on the edge of my bed, his handsome, clearly-cut face, with the closely-cropped white hair and great grey moustache, was there before me, looking at me with a contemptuous sneer, which seemed to say, “You miserable, despicable young coward! Is this the way you fulfil your promise of trying to be a man, worthy of your poor father, who was a brave soldier and a gentleman? Out upon you for a miserable young sneak!”
That all came up wonderfully real before me, and I felt the skin of my forehead wrinkle up and tighten other parts of my face, while I groaned to myself, as if apologising to my uncle,—
“But I can’t stop here, I am so miserable, and I shall be horribly punished for what I could not help. The boys say the Doctor is very severe, sometimes.”
There was my uncle’s stern face still, just as I had conjured it up, and he was frowning.
He will be horribly angry with me, I thought, and it would make poor mamma so unhappy, and—
“I can’t go, and I won’t go,” I said, half aloud. “I don’t care if the Doctor cuts me to pieces; and I won’t tell how I got the marks, for, if I do, all the boys will think I am a sneak.”
“Fill the tea-cup—fill the tea-cup—fill the tea-cup! High up—high up—high up! Fine morning—fine morning—fine morning!”
The notes of a thrush, sounding exactly like that, with the help of a little imagination; and I rose, went to the window, gazed out, and there was the sun, looking like a great globe of orange, lighting up the mists in the hollows, and making everything look so glorious, that I began to feel a little better.
Turning round to look at my schoolfellows asleep in their little narrow beds, all in exceedingly ungraceful attitudes, and looking towzley and queer, I saw that, as I held the blind on one side, the sunlight shone full on Mercer, and I hurt myself directly by bursting out into a silent fit of laughter, which drew my bruised face into pain-producing puckers. But it was impossible to help it, all the same, for Mercer’s phiz looked so comic.