"Good heavens! What is the matter with him!"
"Necessitas non habet legem."
I, being senior boy, had to report. I did so, tremblingly, and imitated the doctor in my brevity.
"Matter, sir—treacle, sir."
"Treacle!" in a voice of concentrated thunder, if you know what that is like.
"His mother sent him a pot of treacle, sir, and he—and he thought it was pomatum, sir, and—and——" my imaginative powers fell before the lightning of the doctor's glance.
"Whose mother?"
"Boston's, sir."
And Boston, after some little delay caused in having to detach himself from surroundings, came forth like a lamb—I mean, like a black sheep.