his chin and, looking upwards, murmur to
himself the lines with an expression of profound emotion. Wilberforce
managed to get through, and another boy called Verney took up the
Eclogue successfully, and so on through the class it was successfully
sustained.

"You pockpuddings, you abysmal apes," Mr. Neech groaned at his class.
"Why couldn't you have learned those lines at home? You idle young
blackguards, you pestilent oafs, you fools of the first water, write
them out. Write them out five times."

"Oh, sir," the Shell protested in unison.

"Oh, sir!" Mr. Neech mimicked. "Oh, sir! Well, I'll let you off this
time, but next time, next time, my stars and garters, I'll flog any boy
that makes a single mistake."

Mr. Neech was a dried-up, snuff-coloured man, with a long thin nose and
stringy neck and dark piercing eyes. He always wore a frock-coat green
with age and a very old top-hat and very shiny trousers. He read Spanish
newspapers and second-hand-book catalogues all the way to school and was
never seen to walk with either a master or a boy. His principal hatreds
were Puseyism and actors; but as two legends were extant, in one of
which he had been seen to get into a first-class railway carriage with a
copy of the Church Times and in the other of which he had been seen
smoking a big cigar in the stalls of the Alhambra Theatre, it was rather
doubtful whether his two hatreds were as deeply felt as they were
fervently expressed. He was reputed to have the largest library in
England outside the British Museum and also to own seven dachshunds. He
was a man who fell into ungovernable rages, when he would flog a boy
savagely and, the flogging done, fling his cane out of the window in a
fit of remorse. He would set impositions of unprecedented length, and
revile himself for ruining the victim's handwriting. He would keep his
class in for an hour and mutter at himself for a fool to keep himself in
as well. Once, he locked a boy in at one o'clock, and the boy's mother
wrote a long letter to complain that her son had been forced to go
without his dinner. Legend said that Mr. Neech had been reprimanded by
Dr. Brownjohn on account of this, which explained Mr. Neech's jibes at
the four pages of complaint from the parents that were supposed
inevitably to follow his mildest rebuke of the most malignant boy.

Michael enjoyed Mr. Neech's eccentricities after the drabness of the
Special. He was lucky enough to be in Mr. Neech's good