At other times he sticks a hand in the armlet of his waistcoat; he
brandishes in the other a thickish bit of smooth cherry-wood, sometimes
dressing his hair withal; and again giving his head a slight scratch
behind the ear, while he takes occasion at the same time for an oblique
glance at a fat boy in the corner, who is reaching down from his seat
after a little paper pellet that has just been discharged at him from
some unknown quarter. The master steals very cautiously and quickly to
the rear of the stooping boy, dreadfully exposed by his unfortunate
position, and inflicts a stinging blow. A weak-eyed little scholar on
the next bench ventures a modest titter, at which the assistant makes a
significant motion with his ruler,--on the seat, as it were, of an
imaginary pair of pantaloons,--which renders the weak-eyed boy on a
sudden very insensible to the recent joke.
You meantime profess to be very much engrossed with your grammar--turned
upside-down; you think it must have hurt, and are only sorry that it did
not happen to a tall, dark-faced boy, who cheated you in a swop of
jackknives. You innocently think that he must be a very bad boy, and
fancy--aided by a suggestion of the old nurse at home on the same
point--that he will one day come to the gallows.
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