The illusion being granted, one can hardly be surprised at his
resenting it."
I nodded, and promised to do my best.
"You are a very good boy, Harry," said Mrs. Stimcoe--a verdict so
different from that which I had arrived expecting, or with any right
to expect, that I stood for some twenty seconds gaping after her as
she pulled her shawl closer and went on her heroic way.
I found Mr. Stimcoe in _deshabille_, on the first-floor landing,
under the derisive surveillance of Masters Doggy Bates, Bob
Pilkington, and Scotty Maclean, whose graceless mirth echoed down to
me from the stair-rail immediately overhead. Ignoring my preceptor's
invitation to bide a wee and take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang
syne, I ran up and knocked their heads together, kicked them into the
dormitory, turned the key on their reproaches, and--these
preliminaries over--descended to grapple with the situation.
Mr. Stimcoe, in night garments, was conducting a dialogue in which he
figured alternately as the tyrant and the victim of oppression.
In the character of Napoleon Bonaparte he had filled a footbath with
cold water, and was commanding the Rev. Philip Stimcoe to strip--as
he put it--to the teeth, and immerse himself forthwith.
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