is pocket.
"Jolland," said the Doctor, "what have you got there?"
"An envelope, sir," explained Jolland, who had now got the remains of
his pudding safely bestowed.
"What is in that envelope?" said the Doctor, who happened to have been
watching him.
"In the envelope, sir? Pudding, sir," said Jolland, as if it were the
most natural thing in the world to send bulky portions of pudding by
post.
"And why did you place pudding in the envelope?" inquired the Doctor in
his deepest tone.
Jolland felt a difficulty in explaining that he had done so because he
wished to avoid eating it, and with a view to interring it later on in
the playground: he preferred silence.
"Shall I tell you why you did it, sir?" thundered the Doctor. "You did
it, because you were scheming to obtain a second portion--because you
did not feel yourself able to eat both portions at your leisure here,
and thought to put by a part to devour in secret at a future time. It's
a most painful exhibition of pure piggishness. There shall be no
pocketing at this table, sir. You will eat that pudding under my eye at
once, and you will stay in and write out French verbs for two days. That
will put an end to any more gorging in the garden for a time, at least."
Jolland seemed stupefied, though relieved, by the unexpected
construction put upon his conduct, as he gulped down the intercepted
fragments of pudding, while the rest diligently cleared their plates
with as much show of appreciation as they could muster.
Mr. Bultitude shuddered at this one more narrow escape. If he had been
detected--as he must have been in another instant--in smuggling pudding
in an envelope he might have incautiously betrayed his real motives, and
then, as the Doctor was morbidly sensitive concerning all complaints of
the fare he provided, he would have got into worse trouble than the
unfortunate Jolland, to say nothing of the humiliation of being detected
in such an act.
It was a solemn warning to him of the dangers he was exposed to hourly,
while he lingered within those walls; but his position was still more
strongly brought home to him by the terrible discovery he made shortly
afterwards.
He was alone in the schoolroom, for the others had all gone down into
the playground, except Jolland, who was confined in one of the
class-rooms below, when the thought came over him to test the truth of
Dick's hint about a name cut on the Doctor's writing-table.
He stole up to
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