Something was “up” with a vengeance—at least as far as I was concerned.
Chapter Four.
School Experiences.
As two or three others, late like ourselves, were scrambling into their places when Tom and myself took our seats, while the old woman who had opened the door for me was bustling about the table, filling a series of tin mugs from the Chinese junk teapot and passing them along towards the outstretched hands that eagerly clutched at them en route downwards from the head of the board, I hoped that my damaged face would have escaped notice, but the master’s ferret-eyes singled me out apparently the instant I entered the room, for he pounced on me at once.
“Boy Leigh,” he shouted out in his deep rolling voice, “stand up!”
I obeyed the order, standing up between the table and the form on which I had been sitting; but Dr Hellyer said nothing further at the time, after seeing me come to the attitude of “attention,” as a drill sergeant would have termed it, and there I remained while the other pupils proceeded with their meal. You must remember that I was almost famishing, for I had had nothing to eat all day beyond the scanty breakfast which I was too much excited to eat before leaving my uncle’s house at Islington in the morning; while the long journey by rail combined with the effects of the fresh sea air had made me very hungry.
It may be imagined, therefore, with what wolfish eyes I watched the boys consuming the piles of bread-and-butter which the old woman distributed, after serving out the allotted allowance of tea in each pupil’s mug! Tom looked up at me sympathisingly every now and then between the bites he took out of the thick hunches on his plate; but the fact of my starving state did not appear to affect his appetite. This made me feel hurt at my chum’s indifference to my sufferings, envying the while every morsel he swallowed, and wondering when my suspense would cease; and, although I had not then heard of the tortures of the classic Tantalus, my feelings must have much resembled those of that mythical person during this ordeal.
At the expiration of, I suppose, about twenty minutes, within which interval every one of the busy crowd round the table had made short work of his portion, not leaving a crumb behind as far as I could notice, the master, pushing back his armchair, got on his feet, an example immediately followed by all the boys, and, all standing up, he said grace.