"I will now ask the perpetrator of this outrage," he thundered, "to stand up, that I may punish him as he deserves."
The little girls all shivered with apprehension, but one or two little boys looked slightly amused. They were not very old or experienced, but they were not green enough to join gratuitously in a game of "Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!"
Mr. Pocklington played his next card.
"I may add," he continued, "that a boy was seen to leave the Study in a surreptitious manner shortly after this offence must have been committed. No one has entered the Study since. That boy, therefore, must be the culprit. If he does not immediately respond to the dictates of his conscience and stand up in his place—I shall expose him! Now, please!"
There was a death-like silence, suddenly broken by piercing shrieks from one Gwendoline Harvey, aged seven, for whose infant nerves the strain had proved too great.
"Please, it wasn't me," she wailed, "and—and—and I've lost my hankey!"
Tender-hearted Miss Arabella supplied the deficiency, and led her out, still sobbing. The inquisition was resumed.
"I shall give the culprit one more minute," announced Mr. Pocklington in the tones of a Grand Inquisitor.
There was another tense silence. The inmates of Wentworth House School breathed hard, looked straight before them, and waited with their small mouths wide open. One or two little girls—and small boys, for that matter—gripped the benches convulsively, and with difficulty refrained from screaming.
"The minute has elapsed," proclaimed the Grand Inquisitor. "Philip, stand up!"