He rushed at me at once, quite certain that as I had perpetrated the former attack on his sacred person while on the way from church, I must likewise be guilty of this second attempt to make a Guy Fawkes of him; and, striking out savagely, he felled me with a weighty blow from his great fist, sending me rolling along under the table, and causing me to see many more stars than an active astronomer could count in the same space of time—but I’m sure he had sufficient justification to have treated me even worse!
“You young ruffian!” he exclaimed as he knocked me down, his passion getting the better both of his scholastic judgment and academical dignity, and he would probably have proceeded to further extremities had not Tom Larkyns started up.
“Oh, please don’t punish Leigh, sir,” I heard him cry out as I lay on the floor, just within reach of the Doctor’s thick club-soled boots, with which I believe he was just going to operate on me in “Lancashire fashion,” as fighting men say. “Please, sir, don’t hurt Leigh—it was I who did it!”
At this interruption, which seemed to recall him to himself, the master regained his composure in an instant.
“Get up, boy!” he said to me, gruffly, spurning me away with his foot, and then, as soon as I was once more in a perpendicular position, he ordered me, sooty as I was, to go and stand up alongside of Tom.
“Brothers in arms, hey?” chuckled our incensed pedagogue, pondering over the most aggravating form of torture which he could administer to us in retaliation for what we had made his person and dignity suffer. “I’ll make you sick of each other’s companionship before I’ve done with you! Stand up there together now, you pair of young desperadoes, while the rest of the boys have dinner, which your diabolical conduct has so long delayed. Mr Smallpage, say grace, please.”
“Smiley” thereupon performed the Doctor’s usual function; then the fellows were helped round to roast mutton and Yorkshire pudding—Tom and I, both hungry as usual, you may be sure—having the gratification of smelling without being allowed to taste.
This was Dr Hellyer’s very practical first stage of punishment; he always commenced with starving us for any offence against his laws and ordinances, and then wound up his trilogy of penance with a proportionate number of “pandies” and solitary confinement.
After dinner the other boys were dismissed, but Tom and I remained still standing there; Dr Hellyer the while seated in his armchair watching us grimly as if taking pleasure in our sufferings, and without uttering a word to either of us.
The afternoon progressed, and the fellows came trooping in to tea at six, the old woman first arriving; to lay the cloth and put on the china teapot and tin mugs. We, however, had to pass through the same ordeal as at dinner; there was none for us, for still the Doctor sat there in the armchair by the fire, looking in the dancing gleams of light like some old wizard or magician weaving a charm of spells which was to turn us into stone where we stood, if that process should not be rendered unnecessary by our being frozen beforehand from cramp through remaining so long in the one position.