SCHOOL DAYS
"Here, lend a hand, one of you, and help me pull out this young, howling brute. Hold your tongue, sir, or I'll kill you!"
"Oh, please, Flashman—please, Walker—don't toss me! I'll fag for you; I'll do anything, only don't toss me!"
"You be hanged!" said Flashman, lugging the wretched boy along; "'twon't hurt you, you! Come along, boys, here he is."
"I say, Flashy," sang out another of the big boys, "drop that; you heard what old Pater Brooke said to-night. I'll be hanged if we'll toss any one against his will. No more bullying. Let him go, I say!"
Flashman, with an oath and a kick, released his prey, who rushed headlong under his bed again, for fear they should change their minds, and crept along underneath the other beds till he got under that of the sixth-form boy, which he knew they daren't disturb.
"There's plenty of youngsters don't care about it," said Walker. "Here, here's Scud East—you'll be tossed, won't you, young un?" Scud was East's nickname, or Black, as we called it, gained by his fleetness of foot.
"Yes," said East, "if you like, only mind my foot."
"And here's another who didn't hide. Hullo! new boy; what's your name, sir?"
"Brown."
"Well, Whitey Brown, you don't mind being tossed?"
"No," said Tom, setting his teeth.
"Come along, then, boys," sang out Walker; and away they all went, carrying along Tom and East, to the intense relief of four or five other small boys who crept out from under the beds and behind them.
"What a trump Scud is!" said one. "They won't come back here now."
"And that new boy, too; he must be a good plucked one."
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