or not, and he had
scarcely five boys who appeared there regularly, and of them one was
the butcher's son, who came rather in spite of his parents than with
their consent. Attendance at church was more slack than ever; and when
he lectured the defaulters, and gave them additional tasks in the week,
it was resented as an injustice. To crown all, Mr. Ramsbotham had
called, and had been extremely insolent about a boy whose ears had been
boxed for reading Pickwick in school, under cover of his Latin grammar,
and Isabel was almost indignant with Miss Faithfull for having ventured
to hint to her that she wished Mr. Frost would be a little more gentle
with the boys.

Isabel was fully alive now, and almost as vehement as her husband, in
her complaints against his many foes. There was no lack of sympathy
here, indeed, there might be rather too much, for she did not afford
the softening influence that James had hitherto found at home.

'Well, Jem,' said Louis, at last, 'I think you should keep your hands
off the boys.'

'You are not bitten with the nonsense about personal dignity and
corporal punishment?' said James.

'By no means. I have an infinite respect for the great institution of
flogging; but a solemn execution is one thing, a random stroke another.'

'Theories are very good things till you come to manage two score dunces
without sense or honour. There is only one sort of appeal to their
feelings that tells.'

'Maybe so, but I have my doubts whether you are the man to make it.'

Louis was sorry he had so spoken, for a flush of pain came up in
James's face at the remembrance of what Fitzjocelyn had long ago
forgotten--a passionate blow given to deter him from a piece of wilful
mischief, in which he was persisting for the mere amusement of
provoking. It stood out among all other varieties of cuff, stroke, and
knock, by the traces it had left, by Mrs. Frost's grief at it, and the
forgiveness from the Earl, and it had been the most humiliating
distress of James's childhood. It humbled him even now, and he
answered--

'You may be right, Louis; I may be not sufficiently altered since I was
a boy. I have struck harder than I intended more than once, and I have
told the boys so.'

'I am sure, if they had any generosity, they would have been touched
with your amends,' cried Isabel.

'After all, a schoolmaster's life does not tend to mend the temper,'
concluded James, sighing, and passing his hand over his fore