“Yes, it’s sure to go on getting worse for a day or two, and then it will begin to get better. Ready?”
“Ready! No,” I cried, as I listened to his poor consolation. “I’m getting horrid. I daren’t go down.”
“You must—you must. Come and face it out before you get worse.”
“But I don’t seem to have got a face,” I cried, glaring out of two slits at my reflection in the glass. “It’s just as if some one had been sitting on it for a week. Oh, you ugly brute!”
“So are you.”
“I meant myself, of course, Tom.”
“Never mind, never mind. Hooray! hooray!” he cried, dancing round the room and snapping his fingers; “we’ve licked ’em—we’ve licked ’em! and you’re cock of the school. Hooray! hooray!”
“But I half wish I hadn’t won now,” I said.
“You will not to-morrow. Oh dear! poor old Eely! didn’t he squirm! Oh, I say! I wish I had given it to old Dicksee ten times as much.”
I couldn’t help laughing, but it hurt horribly, and I was serious again directly.