Instantly each boy seized a sheet of school paper, and having torn it into four pieces selected one of the pieces and waited, pen in hand.
"If you do this," announced Mr. Dumaresq
truculently, as he swung into the doorway, "you will be wise."
Every boy began to scribble madly.
"If you do not do this," continued Mr. Dumaresq, "you will not be wise. If you were to do this you would be wise. If you were not to do this you would not be wise. If you had done this you would have been wise. If you had not done this you would not have been wise. Collect!"
The head boy sprang to his feet, and feverishly dragging the scraps from under the hands of his panting colleagues, laid them on the master's desk. Like lightning Mr. Dumaresq looked them over.
"Seven of you still ignorant of the construction of the simplest conditional sentence!" he bellowed. "Come in this afternoon!"
He tossed the papers back to the head boy. Seven of them bore blue crosses, indicating an error. There may have been more than one mistake in the paper, but one was always enough for Mr. Dumaresq.
"Now sit close!" he commanded.
"Sitting close" meant leaving comparatively comfortable and secluded desks, and crowding in a congested mass round the blackboard, in