“This is confiscated till the end of the term. Flanagan and Batchelor, ‘Show nails.’”
We did show nails. Mine still needed some trimming before they were satisfactory, and then I was bidden descend to the parlour for prayers.
Prayers at Stonebridge House consisted of a few sentences somewhat quickly uttered by Mr Ladislaw, who put in an appearance for the occasion, followed by a loud “Amen” from Miss Henniker, and in almost the same breath, on this occasion, the award of a bad mark to Philpot for having opened his eyes twice during the ceremony.
After this we partook of a silent breakfast, and adjourned for study. Miss Henniker dogged us wherever we went and whatever we did. She sat and glared at us all breakfast time; she sat and glared at us while Mr Ladislaw, or Mr Hashford, the usher, were drilling Latin grammar and arithmetic into us. She sat and glared while we ate our dinner, and she stood and glared when after school we assembled in the boot-room and prepared to escape to the playground. Even there, if we ventured to lift our voices too near the house, a bad mark was shot at us from a window, and if an unlucky ball should come within range of her claws it was almost certainly “confiscated.”
I don’t suppose Stonebridge House, except for Miss Henniker, was much worse than most schools for “backward and troublesome boys.” We were fairly well fed, and fairly well taught, and fairly well quartered. I even think we might have enjoyed ourselves now and then, had we been left to ourselves. But we never were left to ourselves. From morning to night, and, for all we could tell, from night till morning, we were looked after by the lady housekeeper, and that one fact made Stonebridge House almost intolerable.
We were lounging about in the so-called “playground” that afternoon, and I was beginning to discover a little more about some of my new schoolfellows, when there appeared walking towards us down the gravel path a boy about my own age.
He was slender and delicate-looking, I remember, and his pale face contrasted strangely with his almost black clustering hair and his dark big eyes. He wasn’t a handsome boy, I remember thinking; but there was something striking about him, for all that. It may have been his solemn expression, or his square jaw, or his eyes, or his brow, or his hair, or the whole of them put together. All I know is, that the sight of him as he appeared that afternoon walking towards us in the playground, has lived in my memory ever since, and will probably live there till I die.
“Here comes the new boy,” said Philpot. Of course we all knew it must be he.
“And a queer fish, too, by all appearances,” responded Flanagan.
“Very queer indeed,” said Hawkesbury. Hawkesbury was one of the two “backwards,”—but for all that he was the cleverest boy, so the others told me, in the whole school.