Prefect licks cheats
“Now, you youngsters, look here,” said the captain. “You may think you’re very clever; but this sort of thing is cheating, and cheating is what cads do. We don’t want any of it inside Fellsgarth. Dangle, here are the youngsters, and here is the switch; will you lick them, or shall I?”
“I don’t want to lick them. Let them off,” growled Dangle.
The hopes of the culprits rose for a moment, but they went down below
zero when Yorke picked up the cane.
“Wheatfield, come here.”
Wally held out his case-hardened hand and received half a dozen cuts,
for which it is saying a good deal that they made the recipient dance.
D’Arcy followed, and received his six with meek indifference. If he had
come first, he would probably have danced. But as Wally had done that, he stood
firm.
Ashby received three cuts only, which astonished him dreadfully. It was
his first acquaintance with the cane. He had never realised before what a
venomous instrument it can be. Still, he bore it like a man.
Poor Fisher minor had a similar experience. With his brother looking on,
and his messmates to watch how he bore it, he passed through the ordeal
creditably. His three “Ohs” varied in cadence from anguish to surprise, and
from surprise to mild expostulation, “Oh!” “Ehee!” “Ow!” after which he felt very
pleased, on his brother’s account, that he had not shed tears.
“Now cut,” said the captain, “and if you’re bowled out in that sort of
thing again, you won’t be let off so easy.”
“Yorke’s a beast,” said Wally, when the shattered forces mastered once
more in his study, “but he’s a just beast. He gave it us all hot alike.”
No one disputed the proposition.
“I thought he’d let you new kids off, but he didn’t. It’s just as well.
It’ll do you good, and make you sit up.”
“Jolly sell for that cad Dangle,” said D’Arcy. “He thought Yorke was
going to shirk it.”
“He can’t say that now,” said Ashby, rubbing the palm of his hand up and
down his thigh.
Extracted from The Cock-House at Fellsgarth by
Talbot Baines Reed, (Latimer House, 1891), available to download free here.
Picture credit: The Magnet
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Traditional School Discipline
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