"Exactly. Do you want to know how he took away their appetites so that they wouldn't eat so much? He used to make them swallow a spoonful of boiling hot molasses, which scalded their throats, and made it hard for them to swallow."
"I'd like to have overhauled him," said Sturdy.
"If you had, I don't believe there'd have been much left of him, for he was a spindling sort of a man, tall and thin."
"And how did the young fellow like his place?"
"Not very much. He found they were going to half-starve him, too. However, he wouldn't have minded that so much as seeing the poor children abused. While all this was going on, the school-master's daughter fell in love with him."
"Was she pretty?"
"No," said Charlie. "She was the image of her father, and he wasn't anything of a beauty. She was thin, with a hatchet face and yellow hair. However, she continued to make herself think that Nicholas was in love with her, and one day, when her father and mother were gone to London to get a new scholar, she posted off to a female friend of hers, and told her that she had got a beau, and invited her friend and her beau to come to tea. When tea-time came, there they all were in the sitting-room, drinking tea, and faring a great deal better than Nicholas had before, since he had been at the school, when the other young lady and her beau began to poke fun at Nicholas, all on account of Matilda Squeers, whom they supposed him to be in love with. He didn't understand it at all, and told them so.
"'Why,' said John Brodie,—that was the other girl's beau,—'ain't you courtin' Tilda, here?'
"Nicholas protested that he never so much as thought of the thing. At this, Matilda turned all sorts of colors, for she had confidently told both of them that he was in love with her, and, besides, she had no idea that a poor, under-paid teacher would think of refusing her, the——"
"Captain's daughter," suggested Bill Sturdy.