Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/19

Rh table in the middle of the room, and on another running at right angles to it across the right side of the room, in a broad half-bay window. Outside there was a veranda, and the dark evening.

I went to the bench and, half upon it, leant my face in my arms on the cool table-cloth. The things around me were all in a sort of noise above my ears. I could not weep soft tears: the tears were dried behind my eyes. But, after a little, I seemed to grow dreary: and could have wished to sleep.…

I took to no one. One or two fellows made up to me a little at first; but I just answered them and turned away, neither caring to talk to them or let them talk to me. It was not that I was homesick: I had no home. I did not know what it was.

I like Wallace better than any of the others. Neither of us ever have jam or cake: he has not even 3d. a week like me. He loves his little belly. He'll always go to Harris's, the grub shop, for anyone who'll give him a good big bit of the stuff they're getting. (Of course you're licked if you're caught going, except on Saturdays and Wednesdays from two to three.) And I have often told him that I think it is beastly of him to do it; but he doesn't care, so long as he gets the grub. That's one reason why I don't care to talk to him about some things I know of. I tell him tales, and all that; but that's different.

Whittaker is an old beast. He's fond of caning us I'm sure. When you go into the library on Saturdays after school, to get three strokes if you've had more than twelve mistakes in dictation, he won't let you kneel down loose, as if you were praying, but he makes you bend up over till you're quite tight. It's very nasty going tight again after the first one.

Mrs. Whittaker is a humbug. She says '’umble' and '’otel' and '’ospital,' and says it's right to say them that way. She listens to what the fellows say, and then tells the Reverend, and they catch it. Likewise she reads fellows' letters. She corrects fellows' letters home, and makes them say that Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker are very kind to them, and other things.