A loud laugh greeted this disclaimer.
“Well, his nurse, or aunt, or washerwoman, or something.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Shut up, and don’t tell crams.”
“It’s you who are telling crams,” said I, for the blood of the Joneses was getting up.
“Look here; do you mean to call me a crammer?” demanded the speaker, looking very imposing.
“If you say it again I will,” said I. “I tell you that woman had no more to do with me than you; there!”
It was a critical situation, and the key to it was in my accuser’s hands. If he insisted that the lady in question had anything to do with me, I was committed to call him a crammer. And if I called him a crammer, he was equally committed by all tradition to punch my head. And in the humour I was then in, he was not likely to do that without getting one back for himself.
“I know who it was,” suddenly cried Trimble; “of course! Tempest told me last term there was a young ass coming up who’d been at a girls’ school, and had got an exhibition or something. Of course this was his old school dame. Good old Sarah!”
At this terrific exposure the spirit leaked out of me. My tell-tale blushes confirmed what was true in the story, and my silence lent countenance to what was untrue. The delight of my tormentors was beyond words. They danced the “mulberry bush” round me, overwhelmed me with endearing expressions, offered me fans and smelling salts and cushions and hairpins, simulated hysterics and spasms, trod on my skirts, and conversed to me in shrill treble till I was sick of the business. Only one course was open to me. It was an unpleasant one, but on it depended, I felt, my future welfare at Low Heath.