“Go to your place, boy, and take your vulgar guffaws with you!”

Surprised at Fillet’s taking it to heart in this way, I went, much abashed, to my seat, and tried to control my fit of giggling.  But it so possessed me that finally it made a very horrible noise in my nose.  Carpet Slippers raised his little head that was a hybrid between a peach and a billiard ball—­a peach as to the face, and a billiard ball as to the cranium—­and when he saw me sitting with lips tightly set and my desk trembling with my internal laughter, anger put a fresh coating of red upon both peach and ball.  But he took no action at present.

“I-I’ll d-do one of these sums on the board for you.”

Getting up, he turned his back on us and, facing the board, wrote with his chalk the number 10.  Now, as he wrote on a level with his eyes, his fat little head quite eclipsed his writing.  So, simply to show that I was no longer laughing, I called out loudly: 

“What number, sir?”

Round swung Carpet Slippers, his peach-face assuming the tint of a tomato.

“What number?  I-I’ll t-teach you to ask ‘what number’ when I’ve written ‘10’ on the board.  I-I’ve heard what you do in other class-rooms.  D-don’t think you’re going to introduce your hooliganism here.  Go and ask the p-porter to let me have a cane.”

The boys pricked up their ears and looked at me.  Penny let his jaw drop in amazement and, leaving his mouth open, maintained an expression like that of the village idiot.  I stared, flabbergasted, into Carpet Slippers’ face.

“But, sir—­” I ventured.  Tears and temper began to rise in me.

“D-don’t argue.  Do what you’re told.”

“But, sir—­” And then, like a cloud, sullen obstinacy came down upon me.  I was certain that he had been longing for an excuse to flog me.  The pride and the relish of the martyr supported me as, without telling him that his head had obstructed my view, I walked out to do my message.

Finding the porter in his office, I politely inquired if he could spare a cane for Mr. Fillet; and, at my query, he grinned—­the blithering idiot.  The cane that he handed me I took, and, being at that moment a youngster who wouldn’t have let his spirits sink for all the Fillets in the world, I offered back the cane and suggested: 

“I say, are you sure you couldn’t lose this?”

“Quite sure, sir.”

“Well, look here, do you really think you can manage to part with it?”

“Quite sure, sir.”

“Well, don’t you think that, for a man of your age, you look rather a fool standing up there and saying ‘Quite sure’ to everything that’s said to you?  Don’t you think it’s rather a fat and silly thing to do?”

I put it to him as man to man.

“Quite sure, sir,” he replied with a laugh.

“Go to blazes,” I said, “and take your vulgar guffaws with you.”