Robert took possession of the desk nearest him and was at once ejected. Its rightful owner scowled darkly at him. At the next desk he tried to anchor himself, and there was a scuffle and a smothered exchange of blows, from which he escaped with a scraped shin and a strange, unfamiliar sense of being afraid. There was no fight in him. He didn't want to fight. He wanted to belong—to be one of the herd—and he knew dimly that he would first have to learn its laws and submit to its tortures. He tried to grin back when the titter, which seemed endemic, broke out afresh as he stumbled on his ignominious pilgrimage, but the unasked-for partition in their amusement seemed to exasperate them. They whispered things to one another. They commented on his clothes. He realized suddenly how poorly dressed he was. There was a patch on the knee of his trousers and a mended tear on his shiny jacket. His finger-nails weren't very clean. Christine had gone off too early to be sure that he had done them, and he had never thought much of that sort of thing. Now he was paralysed with shame. He could feel the tears strangling him.
Fortunately the desk in the far corner belonged to nobody. It was old and battered and covered with the undecipherable carvings of his predecessors, but at once he loved it. It was his. Its retired position seemed to offer him protection. He hid behind it, drawing a long, shuddering sigh of thankfulness.
The little dark man stood on the raised platform and surveyed them all. His expression was nearly a grimace; as though he had just swallowed a disagreeable medicine. He pursed his lips and held tight to the lapels of his coat, his piercing yet distressful eyes blinking rapidly behind their glasses with a kind of nervous malice.
"Well, my delightful and learned young friends——"
The class wilted in anticipation. But before he spoke again the door opened and they rose thankfully with a shuffle of feet and surreptitious clatter of desks. The clergyman waved to them. If the little dark man was like a blackbird, captive and resentful, the newcomer was like a meagre and somewhat fluttered hen. His hands and wrists were long and yellow and sinewy. He wore no cuffs, but one could see the beginnings of his Jaeger undervest under the black sleeve. He rubbed his chin or smoothed the back of his small head almost ceaselessly.
"You can sit down, boys. One moment, Mr. Ricardo, one moment only——"
He spoke in an undertone. Robert knew it was about him. They both looked in his direction. The little man jerked his head.
"Robert Stonehouse."
He sat motionless, trying to hide from them. But it was of no good. The clergyman made an elevating gesture, and he rose automatically as though he were tied to that gentleman's hand by an invisible string. The desk was much too small for him and he had to wiggle to get free from it. The lid banged. Instantly every boy had turned in his seat to gaze at him, and he saw that this was the worst place that could have fallen to his lot. In his corner he was trapped, a sea of mocking, curious faces between him and his tormentors.
The clergyman smiled palely at him.