This public award made us both jump, and colour up too, for there were a lot of ladies and gentlemen and young ladies close at hand, all of whom must have distinctly heard the Henniker’s genial observation. However, I was most curious to hear more of Smith. Flanagan and I both had colds the rest of the way and finished our conversation behind our handkerchiefs.
“Have you heard any more about him?” asked I. “Not a word. He’s as close as an owl. Hawkesbury says Hashford told him he came here straight from another school. By the way—keep your handkerchief up, man!—by the way, when I said he’s afraid of no one, he is afraid of Hawkesbury, I fancy. I don’t know why—”
“I don’t think I like Hawkesbury, either. He’s got such an everlasting grin.”
“So will you have if you don’t talk lower, you young idiot,” said Flanagan. “Yes, it’s the grin that fetches Smith, I fancy. I grinned at him one day, meaning to be friendly, but he didn’t half like it.”
I laughed at this, greatly to Flanagan’s wrath. Luckily, however, no evil consequences happened, and we reached church without any more bad marks.
Of all days, Sunday at Stonebridge House was the most miserable and desperate. We had not even the occupation of lessons, still less the escape to the playground. After church, we were marched back to the school, and there set to read some dry task book till dinner.
And after dinner we were set to copy out a chapter of Jeremiah or some other equally suitable passage from beginning to end on ruled paper, getting bad marks as on week days for all faults. After this came tea, and after tea another dreary march forth to church. But the culminating horror of the day was yet to come. After evening church—and there really was a sense of escape and peace in the old church, even though we could not make out the sermon—after evening church, we were all taken up to Miss Henniker’s parlour, and there doomed to sit perfectly still for a whole hour, while she read aloud something by one of the very old masters. Oh, the agony of those Sunday evenings!
I have sat fascinated by that awful voice, with a cramp in my leg that I dared not stir to relieve, or a tickling in the small of my back from which there was no escape, or a cobweb on my face I had not the courage to brush away. I have felt sleep taking possession of me, yet daring neither to yawn, nor nod my head, nor wink my eyes. I have stared fixedly at the gas, or the old china ornament on the mantelpiece, till my eyes became watery with the effort and I have suffered all the tortures of a cold in the head without the possibility either of sniffing or clearing my throat!
It made no difference to Miss Henniker that she was reading aloud. She had her eye on every one of us the whole time, nay, more than ever; and many a bad mark was sprinkled up with her readings.
“Once more, dearly beloved—Batchelor, a bad mark,” became to me quite a familiar sound before I had been many Sundays at Stonebridge House.