Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/117

 "I shall entertain your apology when you look less pleased with yourself," he sneered. "Sit down."

But Jan's good resolutions were not to be eradicated any more easily than the rooted hostility of Haigh, who certainly surpassed himself in his treatment of the boy's persistent efforts at amendment. Jan, though no scholar, and never likely to make one now, could be sharp enough in a general way when he chose. But he never had chosen under Mr. Haigh. It was no use attending to a brute who "hotted" you just the same whether you attended or not. And yet that little old man in the Upper Sixth class-room, with a single stern analogy, had made it somehow seem some use to do one's best without sulking, even without looking for fair play, let alone reward. And, feeling a regular new broom at heart, Jan was still determined to sweep clean in spite of Haigh.

It chanced to be a Virgil morning, and of course the new broom began by saying his "rep" as he had never said it before. Perhaps he deserved what he got for that.

"I thought you were one of those boys, Rutter," said Haigh, "who affect a constitutional difficulty in learning repetition? I only wish I'd sent you up to Mr. Thrale six weeks ago!"

Yet Jan maintained his interest throughout the fresh passage which the form proceeded to construe, and being put on duly in the hardest place, got through again without discredit. It was easy, however, for a member of the Middle Remove to take an interest in his Virgil, for that poet can have had few more enthusiastic interpreters than Mr. Haigh, who indeed might have been the best master in the school if he had been less of a bullying boy himself, his method in a Virgil hour, at any rate, was beyond reproach. If his form knew the lesson, there was no embroidery of picturesque detail or of curious information