“Now I shall be all right!” thought Anton; for this was the subject in which he most excelled. But even now things continued to go wrong; time after time he found he could not answer, and something began to glitter in his eyes which ought to have warned Heer Doornik.
Again the master put a question. And the boy cried, pale with that terrible bluish paleness one only sees where there is coloured blood,—“I can’t answer that question, sir; and you know I can’t, because it’s not on what I’ve learned.”
“But perhaps one of the other boys can,—William, for instance?” asked Hendriks.
“Why, no,” cried Willie, “I never heard of it.”
Heer Doornik—in spite of his fondness for speeches in general—was far from pleased with this speech; he understood how every one must feel that there was something behind this, and shortly afterwards brought the examination to a somewhat precipitate close by giving his wife the sign to order up the refreshments.
Whoever else may have taken bread and butter, or pine-apple tart,—whoever else was regaled with the cabinet-pudding,—neither Anton nor his mother tasted them.
“Don’t be uneasy, madam,” said the Governor, to the widow, as he called one of the boys to bring her a glass of wine and water, seeing that she trembled in every limb. “Don’t be uneasy, Anton is sure to get the prize.”
The examination was over, the bread and butter and cakes had disappeared, the scholars having displayed in their extermination a far greater zeal and endurance than in the ordeal of answering questions. Now came the distribution of prizes, and—the Speech!
Many a time had people seen Heer Doornik nervous, and heard him get entangled in his sentences, but the display he made to-day was absolutely unprecedented.
The oration lasted fully a quarter of an hour, and it was not the heat alone which made the ladies look so flushed and uncomfortable.