A Dog with a Bad Name Part 12

The question did not altogether please the new a.s.sistant, but he was anxious not to come across his colleague too early in their acquaintanceship.

"She pays me nothing the first month. After that, if I suit, I'm to have a pound a month."

"If you suit? I suppose you know that depends on whether I like you or not?"

"I hope not," blurted out Jeffreys--"that is," added he, seeing his mistake, "I hope we shall _get_ on well together."

"Depends," said Trimble. "I may as well tell you at once I hate stuck- uppedness (this was a compound word worthy of a young schoolmaster). If you're that sort you'd better cry off at once. If you can do your work without giving yourself airs, I shall let you alone."

Jeffreys was strongly tempted after this candid avowal to take the youthful sn.o.b's advice and cry off. But the memory of yesterday's miserable experiences restrained him. He therefore replied, with as little contempt as he was able to put into the words,--

"Thanks."

Trimble's quick ear detected the ill-disguised scorn of the reply. "You needn't try on that sort of talk," said he; "I can tell you plump, it won't do. You needn't think because ma took you on for the asking, you're going to turn up your nose at the place!"

"I don't think so," said Jeffreys, struggling hard with himself. "How many boys are there here?"

"Forty-four. Are you anything of a teacher? Can you keep order?"

"I don't know; I haven't tried yet."

"Well, just mind what you're about. Keep your hands off the boys; we don't want manslaughter or anything of that sort here."

Jeffreys started. Was it possible that this was a random shot, or did Trimble know about Bolsover and young Forrester? The next remark somewhat rea.s.sured him.

"They're looking sharp after private schools now; so mind, hands off.

There's one o'clock striking. All in! Come along. You'd better take the second cla.s.s and see what you can make of them. Precious little ma will put her nose in, now you're here to do the work."

He led the way down the pa.s.sage and across a yard into an outhouse which formed the schoolroom. Here were a.s.sembled, as the two ushers entered, some forty boys ranging in age from seven to twelve, mostly, to judge from their dress and manners, of the small shopkeeper and farmer cla.s.s.

The sound of Trimble's voice produced a dead silence in the room, followed immediately by a movement of wonder as the big, ungainly form of the new a.s.sistant appeared. Jeffreys' looks, as he himself knew, were not prepossessing, and the juvenile population of Galloway House took no pains to conceal the fact that they agreed with him.

"Gordon," said Trimble, addressing a small boy who had been standing up when they entered, "what are you doing?"

"Nothing, sir."

"You've no business to be doing nothing! Stand upon that form for an hour!"

The boy obeyed, and Trimble looked round at Jeffreys with a glance of patronising complacency.

"That's the proper way to do with them," said he. "Plenty of ways of taking it out of them without knocking them about."

Jeffreys made no reply; he felt rather sorry for the weak-kneed little youngster perched up on that form, and wondered if Mr Trimble would expect him (Jeffreys) to adopt his method of "taking it out" of his new pupils.

Just then he caught sight of the familiar face of Master Freddy, one of his friends of the morning, who was standing devouring him with his eyes as if he had been a ghost. Jeffreys walked across the room and shook hands with him.

"Well, Freddy, how are you? How's Teddy?"

"I say," said Trimble, in by no means an amiable voice, as he returned from this little excursion, "what on earth are you up to? What did you go and do that for?"

"I know Freddy."

"Oh, do you? Freddy Rosher, you're talking. What do you mean by it?"

"Please, sir, I didn't mean--"

"Then stay in an hour after school, and write four pages of your copy- book."

It took all Jeffreys' resolution to stand by and listen to this vindictive sentence without a protest. But he restrained himself, and resolved that Freddy should find before long that all his masters were not against him.

"That's your fault," said Trimble, noticing the dissatisfied look of his colleague. "How are we to keep order if you go and make the boys break rules? Now you'd better get to work. Take the second cla.s.s over there and give them their English history. James the Second they're at. Now, you boys, first cla.s.s, come up to me with your sums. Second cla.s.s, take your history up to Mr Jeffreys. Come along; look alive!"

Jeffreys thereupon found himself mobbed by a troop of twenty of the youngest of the boys, and haled away to a desk at the far end of the room, round which they congregated book in hand, and waited for him to commence operations.

It was an embarra.s.sing situation for the new usher. He had never been so fixed before. He had often had a crowd of small boys round him, tormenting him and provoking him to anger; but to be perched up here at a desk, with twenty tender youths hanging on the first word which should fall from his lips, was to say the least, a novel experience. He glanced up towards the far end of the room, in the hopes of being able to catch a hint from the practised Jonah as to how to proceed. But he found Jonah was looking at him suspiciously over the top of his book, and that was no a.s.sistance whatever. The boys evidently enjoyed his perplexity; and, emboldened by his recent act of friendliness to the unlucky Freddy, regarded him benevolently.

"Will some one lend me a book?" at last said Jeffreys, half desperate.

A friendly t.i.tter followed this request.

"Don't you know it without the book?" asked one innocent, handing up a book.

"I hope you do," said Jeffreys, blushing very much as he took it.

"Now," added he, turning to the reign of James II, "can any one tell we what year King James II came to the throne?"

"Please, sir, that's not the way," interposed another irreverent youngster, with a giggle. "You've got to read it first, and then ask us."

Jeffreys blushed again.

"Is that the way?" said he. "Very well. James II succeeded his brother Charles in 1685. One of his first acts on coming--"

"Oh, we're long past that," said two or three of his delighted audience at a breath; "we've done to where Monmouth's head was cut off."

This was very uncomfortable for the new master. He coloured up, as if he had been guilty of a scandalous misdemeanour, and fumbled nervously with the book, positively dreading to make a fresh attempt. At last, however, he summoned up courage.

"The death of this ill-fated n.o.bleman was followed by a still more terrible measure of retribution against those who had--"

"Please, sir, we can't do such long words; we don't know what that means. You've got to say it in easy words, not what's put in the book."

Jeffreys felt that all the sins of his youth were rising up against him that moment. Nothing that he had ever done seemed just then as bad as this latest delinquency.

"After Monmouth's death they made it very--(hot, he was going to say, but he pulled himself up in time), they made it very (whatever was the word?)--very awkward for those who had helped him. A cruel judge named Jeffreys--"

That was a finishing stroke! The reader could have sunk through the floor as he saw the sensation which this denunciation of himself caused among his audience. There was not a shadow of doubt in the face of any one of them as to his ident.i.ty with the ferocious judge in question.

What followed he felt was being listened to as a chapter or autobiography, and nothing he could say could now clear his character of the awful stain that rested upon it.

"A cruel judge condemned more than three hundred persons--"

"You forgot to say his name, please, sir," they put in.