“Tell the gentleman,” said Arnobius, “what he did first to you, my boy.”
“As the good gentleman says,” answered the boy, “first I did something to him, and then he did something to me.”
“I told you so,” said Jucundus; “a sensible boy, after all; but the schoolmaster had the best of it, I’ll wager.”
“First,” answered he, “I grinned in his face, and he took off his wooden shoe, and knocked out one of my teeth.”
“Good,” said Jucundus, “the justice of Pythagoras. Zaleuchus could not have done better. The mouth sins, and the mouth suffers.”
“Next,” continued he, “I talked in school-time to my chum; and Rupilius put a gag in my jaws, and kept them open for an hour.”
“The very Rhadamanthus of schoolmasters!” cried Jucundus: “and thereupon you struck up a chant, divine though inarticulate, like the statue of Memnon.”
“Then,” said the boy, “I could not say my Virgil, and he tore the shirt from off my back, and gave it me with the leather.”
“Ay,” answered Jucundus, “ ‘arma virumque’ branded on your hide.”
“Afterwards I ate his dinner for him,” continued the boy, “and then he screwed my head, and kept me without food for two days.”