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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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146 looking very grim; ‘Bolder’s father was two pound ten short. Where is Bolder?’ ‘Here he is, please sir,’ rejoined twenty officious voices. Boys are very like men to be sure. ‘Come here, Bolder,’ said Squeers. An unhealthy-looking boy, with warts all over his hands, stepped from his place to the master’s desk, and raised his eyes imploringly to Squeers’s face; his own, quite white from the rapid beating of his heart. ‘Bolder,’ said Squeers, speaking very slowly, for he was considering, as the saying goes, where to have him. ‘Bolder, if you father thinks that because--why, what’s this, sir?’ As Squeers spoke, he caught up the boy’s hand by the cuff of his jacket, and surveyed it with an edifying aspect of horror and disgust. ‘What do you call this, sir?’ demanded the schoolmaster, administering a cut with the cane to expedite the reply. ‘I can’t help it, indeed, sir,’ rejoined the boy, crying. ‘They will come; it’s the dirty work I think, sir--at least I don’t know what it is, sir, but it’s not my fault.’ ‘Bolder,’ said Squeers, tucking up his wristbands, and moistening the palm of his right hand to get a good grip of the cane, ‘you’re an incorrigible young scoundrel, and as the last thrashing did you no good, we must see what another will do towards beating it out of you.’ With this, and wholly disregarding a piteous cry for mercy, Mr Squeers fell upon the boy and caned him soundly: not leaving off, indeed, until his arm was tired out. ‘There,’ said Squeers, when he had quite done; ‘rub away as |
