“A bad mark to you, Batchelor, for interrupting me, and another for talking. Hawkesbury, a bad mark for talking in class.”
We were all astonished. We had hitherto looked upon Hawkesbury as a privileged person who might do as he liked, and upon Mr Hashford as a person who had not a soul of his own. Here was the phenomenon not only of our schoolfellow getting publicly censured, but of Mr Hashford backing up Miss Henniker, and Miss Henniker backing up Mr Hashford.
Flanagan afterwards confided to me his theory of this unwonted event. “I expect,” said he, “Hashford’s just got his screw raised, and wants to show off a bit before the Hen, and she wants to encourage him to be rather more down on us, you know. She’s got the toothache, too, I know, and that accounts for her not being particular who she drops on, though I am surprised she pitched on Hawkesbury. How pleased your chum Smith will be!”
But my friend Smith, when I had a chance of speaking to him, seemed indifferent about the whole affair, being taken up with troubles of his own. A letter had come for him that day, he told me, in tones of fierce anger. It had been opened and read as usual, before being handed to him. He did not complain of that; that was an indignity we had to submit to every time we received a letter. But what he did complain of, and what had roused his temper, was that the last half-sheet of the letter had been deliberately torn off and not given to him.
Directly after class he had marched boldly to the Henniker’s parlour and knocked at the door.
“Come in!” snapped she.
Smith did come in, and proceeded to business at once.
“You haven’t given me all my letter, ma’am,” he said.
Miss Henniker looked at him with some of the same astonishment with which she had regarded me when I once told her she was to see my socks were regularly darned.
Then she pulled herself up, in her usual chilly manner, and replied, “I am aware of that, Smith.”