“Robin!” he said.

Robin gave a violent start, and then a shuffling, reluctant movement as if prodded into action against his will.

“Get up and come here!” his brother said.

Robin, in the act of blundering to his feet, checked abruptly, as if arrested by something in the peremptory tone.  “What for?” he asked, in a surly note.

“Get up,” Green repeated, with grim insistence, “and come here!”

Robin grabbed at the end of the row of desks nearest to him and dragged himself slowly up.  But there he hung irresolute.  His heavy brows were drawn, but the eyes beneath had a frightened, hunted look.  They glared at Green with a defiance so precarious that it was pathetic.

Green waited inexorably, magisterially, at his table.  The sunlight had gone and the room was darkening.  Very slowly Robin moved forward, dragging his feet along the bare boards.  At the other end of the row of desks he halted.  His eyes travelled swiftly between his brother’s stern countenance and the wand of office that lay before him on the writing-table.  He shivered.

“Come here!” Green said again.

He crept a little nearer like a guilty dog.  His humped shoulders looked higher than usual.  His eyes shone red.

Across the writing-table Green faced him.  He spoke, very distinctly.

“Why did you throw that stone at Mrs. Fielding’s car?”

Robin was trembling from head to foot.  He drew a quivering breath between his teeth, and stood silent.

“Tell me why!” Green insisted.

Robin locked his working hands together.  Green waited.

“It—­it—­I didn’t see—­Mrs. Fielding,” he blurted forth at last.

Green made a slight movement that might have indicated relief, but his tone was as uncompromising as before as he said, “That’s not an answer to my question.  I asked you why you did it.”

Robin shrank from the curt directness of his speech.  His defiance wilted visibly.  “I—­didn’t mean to break the window, Dicky,” he said, twisting and cracking his fingers in rising agitation.

“What did you mean to do?” said Green.

Robin stood silent again.

“Are you going to answer me?” Green said, after a pause.

Robin made a great effort.  He parted his straining hands and rested them upon the table behind which Green sat.  Standing so, he glowered down into his brother’s grim face with something of menace in his own.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Dicky,” he said, with stupendous effort.  “I’m not going—­to take a caning for it.”

Green’s eyebrows went up.  He sat perfectly still, looking straight up into the heavy face above him.  For several seconds a tense silence reigned.

Then:  “Oh yes, you will,” he said quietly.  “You will take—­whatever I decide to give you.  Sit down there!” He indicated the end of the bench nearest to him.  “I’ll deal with you presently.”