“How do you do, Mr. Roylston?” exclaimed Kit, offering his hand, and receiving three of the master’s lifeless fingers. A pencil occupied the other two. “Ah!” he murmured,—Kit afterwards declared, with satisfaction,—“Lawrence, Wilson, Deering—ten minutes late. I congratulate you on the punctual way in which you begin the new year.”
“Oh, sir, we were beguiled by the way,” protested the irrepressible Kit. “The woman beguiled me, sir, and I did eat.”
“Faugh!” exclaimed Mr. Roylston. “Spare me your coarse irreverence. You are redolent of the unpleasant odors of the Pie-house. I will give you five marks apiece.”
“Oh, sir!”
“Please, sir!”
“I beg of you, sir. Pray divide ‘em, sir.”
“Silence, Wilson; you are impertinent as well as irreverent. If you linger longer with this futile protesting, I shall double your marks. Kindly go at once and unpack your trunks.”
“Please, sir; we always do that in the evening, sir; and I hope you will allow us to go to the form-room, sir.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me so. Write out for me before to-morrow’s school fifty lines of the Æneid, and go at once.”
“Very good, sir!” And lest they all get a similar dose of “pensum,” as such punishments were called, they hurried off to the Third Form common-room. There they found a crowd of newly-arrived boys, engaged in a vociferous denunciation of the Doctor’s new rule against caves in the Woods. The news had evidently been announced by the prefects.