But I felt anything but comfortable an hour later, when I was back in school, after the breakfast had been cleared, for I could see that the boys had their eyes upon us, and were whispering, and I knew it related to the punishment to come.
The worst moments were when the Doctor entered and took his place in his pulpit amidst a suppressed rustle, and I set my teeth as I stood up, and shrank down again at the earliest opportunity, feeling as if the Doctor’s eye was fixed upon me, and, as it happened, just as I was wishing he would speak, and, as I felt it, put me out of my misery, he uttered one of his tremendous coughs, which had far more effect in producing silence than Mr Rebble’s words.
“Thomas Mercer, Burr junior,” he said loudly, “come up here.”
“I wish I had run away this morning,” was my first thought, but it was gone directly, and I was glad I had not, as I walked as firmly as I could, side by side with my brother offender, right up to the front of the Doctor’s desk, where he sat frowning upon us like a judge without his wig and gown.
“Hah!” he ejaculated in his most awe-inspiring tones, as he looked at us searchingly. “No doubt about it. Disgraceful marks, like a pair of rough street boys instead of young gentlemen. So you two have been fighting?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am glad that you have frankness enough to own to it. You, Mercer, knew better; but you, sir, had to learn that you have broken one of the most rigid rules of my establishment. I object to fighting, as savage, brutal, and cruel, and I will not allow it here. Mr Rebble, give these boys heavy impositions, and you will both of you stop in and study every day for a fortnight under Mr Hasnip’s directions. Some principals would have administered the cane or the birch, but I object to those instruments as being, like fighting, savage, brutal, and cruel, only to be used as a last resource, when ordinary punishments suitable for gentlemen fail. I presume that you make no defence?” He continued rolling out his words in a broad volume of sound. “You own that you have both been fighting? Silence is a full answer. Return to your places.”
I heard Mercer utter a low sigh, and my breast felt overcharged as we went back to our desks, where we were no sooner seated than Mercer whispered,—