uring his
frequent attacks of anger it grew dark and purple. His nails were bitten
to the quick, for while some trembling boy was construing he would sit at
his desk shaking with the fury that consumed him, and gnaw his fingers.
Stories, perhaps exaggerated, were told of his violence, and two years
before there had been some excitement in the school when it was heard that
one father was threatening a prosecution: he had boxed the ears of a boy
named Walters with a book so violently that his hearing was affected and
the boy had to be taken away from the school. The boy's father lived in
Tercanbury, and there had been much indignation in the city, the local
paper had referred to the matter; but Mr. Walters was only a brewer, so
the sympathy was divided. The rest of the boys, for reasons best known to
themselves, though they loathed the master, took his side in the affair,
and, to show their indignation that the school's business had been dealt
with outside, made things as uncomfortable as they could for Walters'
younger brother, who still remained. But Mr. Gordon had only escaped the
country living by the skin of his teeth, and he had never hit a boy since.
The right the masters possessed to cane boys on the hand was taken away
from them, and Squirts could no longer emphasize his anger by beating his
desk with the cane. He never did more now than take a boy by the shoulders
and shake him. He still made a naughty or refractory lad stand with one
arm stretched out for anything from ten minutes to half an hour, and he
was as violent as before with his tongue.

No master could have been more unfitted to teach things to so shy a boy as
Philip. He had come to the school with fewer terrors than he had when
first he went to Mr. Watson's. He knew a good many boys who had been with
him at the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and instinctively
realised that among the larger numbers his deformity would be less
noticeable. But from the first day Mr. Gordon struck terror in his heart;
and the master, quick to discern the boys who were frightened of him,
seemed on that account to take a peculiar dislike to him. Philip had
enjoyed his work, but now he began to look upon the hours passed in school
with horror. Rather than risk an answer which might be wrong and excite a
storm of abuse from the master, he would sit stupidly silent, and when it
came towards his turn to stand up and construe he grew sick and white with
apprehension.