Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/57

 But through it all the satisfaction of that one resounding smack survived, and kept the infuriated Jan just sane enough to stop short of tooth and nail when finally overwhelmed.

"Tiger's the word," panted Shockley, when they were about done with him. "But if you try playing the tiger here, ever again, you son of a gun, you'll be killed by inches, as sure as you're blubbing now! So you'd better creep into your lair, you young tiger, and lie down and die like a mangy dog!"

It had taken some minutes to produce the tears, but the tears did not quench the fierce animosity of the eyes that shed them, and they were dry before Jan gained his study and slammed the door. And there you may picture him in the chair at the table, on the still bare boards: hot, dishevelled, aching and ashamed, yet rejoicing in his misery at the one shrewd left-hand smack he had somehow administered upon an impudent though defenceless head.

He could hear it for his consolation all the afternoon!

The studies emptied; it was another belated summer's day, and there was a game worth watching on the Upper. Soon there was no sound to be heard but those from the street, which came through the upper part of the ground-glass window, the only part of the back study windows that was made to open; but Jan sat staring at the wall before his eyes, as though the fresh air was nothing to him, as though he had not been brought up in his shirtsleeves in and out of the open air in all weathers. . . And so he was still sitting when a hesitating step came along the passage, paused in the next study, and then, but not for a minute or two, at Jan's door.

"What do you want?" he demanded rudely, when he had responded to a half-hearted knock by admitting Chips