After flinching a second time, I lowered my voice a little.
“I thought you ought to know,” I said, “that you are very generally referred to—I trust without foundation—as Beery.”
For perhaps twelve, or it might have been thirteen, seconds, the silence was only broken by the cries of the footballers. But I observed that his cheeks were suffused with blood and his myopic eyes beginning to bulge. It was a repulsive sight, and then, like Mr. Muglington, he stood revealed in his true character. No less intoxicated than the former with the petty authority conferred by his position, his general conduct, as well as his verbiage, was even coarser and more debased.
“Look here,” he said, “young What’s-your-name, I don’t know your name, and I don’t want to. But if I have any more of your insolence I shall report you to the headmaster. And now you can clear out and take your chocolates with you.”
Stung to the quick, and with the tears running down my cheeks, I nevertheless held up my hand.
“One moment,” I said. “You have misapprehended me, and it was perhaps foolish of me to have supposed that it could have been otherwise. But I must clearly point out to you, both for my own sake and that of the school to which we both belong, that it will be rather I who shall be obliged to report you for the language that I have listened to this day.”
Florid to an extreme that I have seldom seen equalled, he opened his mouth once or twice in silence. Then he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“I had rather flattered myself,” he said, “on my temperance.”
“On the contrary,” I said, “I am obliged to remind you that you have twice openly invoked the Deity.”
“Good God!” he gasped.