The Fifth Form boy then solemnly emptied half the inkpot on to the top of the young gentleman’s head, who ventured neither by word nor gesture to protest.
“Now you can go, sir!” and without another word he led the small youth, down whose face trickled a dozen tiny streams of black, making it look very like a gridiron, to the door, and there gently but firmly handed him into the passage. The wretched youth flew off to proclaim his sorrows to his confederates, and vow vengeance all over Tadpole and Guinea-pig-land against his tormentor and the new boy, who was the author of all his humiliation.
Pembury meanwhile returned to Stephen. That young gentleman had felt his belief in Pembury’s authority somewhat shaken by this unusual mode of punishment, but the Fifth Form boy soon reassumed his ascendency. He produced from his pocket a paper, and thus addressed Stephen: “Dr Senior regrets that he should be absent at such an important time in the history of Saint Dominic’s as the day of your arrival, Master Greenfield, but he will be back to-morrow. Meanwhile, you are to occupy yourself with answering the questions on this paper, and take the answers to the head master’s study at ten to-morrow. Of course you will not be so dishonourable as to show the questions to any one, not even your brother, or attempt to get the slightest help in answering them. Good-bye, my boy. Don’t trouble to stare at my left leg, if it is shorter than the other. Good-bye.”
Poor Stephen felt so confused by the whole of this oration, particularly the last sentence, which made him blush scarlet with shame, that for some time after the lame boy had hobbled off he could not bring himself to look at the paper. At last, however, he took it up.
This, then, was the awful examination paper which was to determine his position at Saint Dominic’s, or else expose his ignorance to the scorn of his masters. How he wished he was on the other side of it, and that the ordeal was over!
“Question 1. Grammar. Parse the sentence, ‘Oh, ah!’ and state the gender of the following substantives: ‘and,’ ‘look,’ ‘here.’”
Stephen scratched his head and rubbed his eyes. This was not like anything he had learned at home. They must learn out of quite different books at Saint Dominic’s.
“Question 2. History—”
“Hullo,” thought Stephen, “they don’t give many questions in grammar; that’s a good job.”
“Question 2. History. Whose daughter was Stephen the Second, and why was he nicknamed the ‘Green?’”