"You'll be seen, Dick. Old Jebb's eyes are rolling about."
"They always are, and be hanged to him, when Brabazon's away!" exclaimed Smart from the other side of Dick, as resentfully as if the rolling of the Reverend Mr. Jebb's eyes were a personal affront.
Presently the opportunity came; Dick raised the apple, carefully took aim, and sent it flying. Good aim, for it struck the cheek of Mr. Henry, making on it a great dash and splash, as it is in the nature of a rotten apple to do. But, unfortunately, at the very moment of Dick's giving an impetus to the missile, Mr. Henry happened to raise his eyes; he saw the deliberate aim, saw the throw, and Dick knew that he saw it. The whole room was aroused.
"Who did that?" cried out Mr. Baker, in a passion. "He shall have a good caning, whoever it was."
Nobody answered. The second desk especially, bending attentively over their books, looked up in innocent surprise.
"Who did it, I ask?" roared Mr. Baker, a choleric man, beginning to talk fast and furiously, and to cane his table as kindly as if it had been a boy's back. In the midst, in walked the Head Master. As he took his place the noise sunk to a calm.
"Did you see who flung the apple, Mr. Henry?" inquired the Master, when he was made cognizant of the cause of uproar he had come upon: and his quiet voice of authority presented a contrast to Mr. Baker's.
Involuntarily, as it were, and for a moment only, Mr. Henry's glance met Dick's. Something like shame for the act, something like a piteous appeal for silence, went out of Dick's eyes. It is so very different, you see—the accomplishing a little thing of this sort with impunity, and the being caught in the act. Mr. Henry, replying to the Head Master, said it might have been an accident, and finished wiping his face with his handkerchief. A nice mess the cambric was in.
"Accident or no accident, the boy shall be punished if I can discover him," returned the doctor. "Can't you tell who flung it?"
Mr. Henry merely shook his head very slightly. It was of no consequence, he quietly said, and called up the third class for its German exercises. Dr. Brabazon, letting the matter drop, sat down and began turning the things over on his table in search of his lead-pencil. Not finding it, he took one from his pocket, and, in doing so, let it fall. It rolled along the floor, and one of the boys picked it up.