the trouble before him.

Now Fillet was in the worst of tempers, having been just incensed by
a boy who had declared that two gills equalled one pint, two pints
one quart, and two quarts one rod, pole, or perch. So, when I
brought my sum up and giggled at the answer, he looked at me as if
he neither liked me nor desired that I should ever like him. Then he
indulged in cheap sarcasms. This he was wont to do, and, after
emitting them through his silky beard, he would draw in his breath
through parted teeth, as a child does when it has the taste of
peppermint in its mouth.

"I-I-I t-tell you, a boy in a kindergarten could get it right--a
g-g-guttersnipe could. I-I-I-I--"

This was so much like what they yell from a fire-engine that, though
I struggled hard, I could not contain a giggle.

"I-I-I'll do it for you."

He got it wrong, which elicited a bursting giggle from me. Fillet
turned on me like a barking dog.

"Go to your place, boy, and take your vulgar guffaws with you!"

Surprised at Fillet's taking it to heart in this way, I went, much
abashed, to my seat, and tried to control my fit of giggling. But it
so possessed me that finally it made a very horrible noise in my
nose. Carpet Slippers raised his little head that was a hybrid
between a peach and a billiard ball--a peach as to the face, and a
billiard ball as to the cranium--and when he saw me sitting with
lips tightly set and my desk trembling with my internal laughter,
anger put a fresh coating of red upon both peach and ball. But he
took no action at present.

"I-I'll d-do one of these sums on the board for you."

Getting up, he turned his back on us and, facing the board, wrote
with his chalk the number 10. Now, as he wrote on a level with his
eyes, his fat little head quite eclipsed his writing. So, simply to
show that I was no longer laughing, I called out loudly:

"What number, sir?"

Round swung Carpet Slippers, his peach-face assuming the tint of a
tomato.

"What number? I-I'll t-teach you to ask 'what number' when I've
written '10' on the board. I-I've heard what you do in other
class-rooms. D-don't think you're going to introduce your
hooliganism here. Go and ask the p-porter to let me have a cane."

The boys pricked up their ears and looked at me. Penny let his jaw
drop in amazement and, leaving his mouth open, maintained an
expression like that of the village idiot. I stared, flabbergasted,
into Carpet Slippers' face.

"But, sir--"