e was not thoughtful or stable enough to see the duty of
interfering to prevent other and hardly less tolerable persecutions.

It so happened that at a game of cricket Walter by accident had received
a blow on the knee from the cricket-ball bowled by Franklin, who was a
tremendously hard and swift bowler. The hurt which this had caused was
so severe that he was ordered by Dr Keith to sleep on the ground-floor
in the cottage for a fortnight, in order to save him the exertion of
running up and down so many stairs. The opportunity of this prolonged
absence was maliciously seized by the tyrants of Number 10; but Eden
bore up far more manfully than he had done in the old days. He was
quite a different, and a far braver little fellow, thanks to Walter,
than he had been the term before; and, looking forward to his friend's
speedy return, he determined to bear his troubles without saying a word
about them. He was far more bullied during this period than Henderson
knew of, for some of the threats and commands by which he was coerced
were given in Henderson's absence, as he was allowed to sit up half an
hour later than those in the form below. For instance, Eden was ordered
never to look at a book or to finish learning his lessons in the
bedroom; and he was strictly forbidden to get up until the second bell
rang in the morning. If he disobeyed these orders, he was soused with
water, pelted with shoes, and beaten with slippers, and on the whole he
found it better to be content to lose place in form, and to get
impositions for missing chapel, than to attempt to brave these
hindrances. When, however, he had been late two mornings running,
Henderson got the secret out of him, and at once entreated Harpour and
Jones to abandon this cruelty, throwing out hints that if they refused,
he would take some measures to get it stopped by one of the monitors.
If Eden had been plucky enough to embrace his natural right of obtaining
protection from one of his own schoolfellows in the sixth, he would have
been efficiently defended. Appealing to a monitor in order to secure
immunity from disgraceful and wholly intolerable bullying is a very
different thing from telling a master; and although the worst boys tried
to get it traditionally regarded as an unmitigated form of sneaking, yet
the public opinion of the best part of the school would have been found
to justify it. But the two bullies knew that Eden would never have the
heart to venture